The American National State and the Early West 9781139572613, 9781107015289

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The American National State and the Early West The American National State and the Early West challenges the widely held myth that the American national state was weak in the early days of the republic. William H. Bergmann reveals how the federal government used its fiscal and military powers and bureaucratic authority to enhance land acquisitions, promote infrastructure development, and facilitate commerce and communication in the early trans-­Appalachian West. Energetic federal state-building efforts prior to 1815 grew from national state security interests as Native Americans and British imperial designs threatened to unravel the republic. Through partnerships with white westerners and western state governments, the federal ­government encouraged commercial growth and emigration, transforming the borderland into a bordered land. Taking a regional approach, this work synthesizes the literatures of social history, political science, and ­economic history to provide a new narrative of American expansionism. William H. Bergmann is an assistant professor in the department of history at Slippery Rock University.

The American National State and the Early West

William H. Bergmann Slippery Rock University

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107015289 © William H. Bergmann 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Bergmann, William H., 1975– The American national state and the early West / William H. Bergmann. p.  cm. Expanded version of author’s Ph.D. thesis. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-01528-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1.  United States–Territorial expansion–History–18th century.  2.  United States–Territorial expansion–History–19th century.  3.  United States–Territorial expansion–Government policy.  4.  Northwest, Old–Economic policy.  5.  Ohio River Valley–Economic policy.  6.  Indians of North America–Northwest, Old–Government relations.  7.  Indians of North America–Ohio River Valley–Government relations.  I.  Title. E179.5.B467  2012 970.01–dc23    2012016510 ISBN 978-1-107-01528-9 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To my mother, father, and Lara

Contents

List of Maps Acknowledgments 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction Property War Martial Economies A Bordered Land Webs of Commerce The National State in Indian Country Partnerships Epilogue

Bibliography Index

page viii ix 1 11 53 94 131 172 213 253 259 281

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Maps

1 Rivers in the Trans-Appalachian West 2 The West in 1795 3 The West in 1810

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20 97 215

Acknowledgments

The process of revising and expanding my dissertation into a monograph could not have come to fruition without the support of many people. Several institutions granted me generous financial support for researching and writing this book. As a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, I received graduate fellowships from the department of history in support of the dissertation. Northern Michigan University awarded me two faculty research grants, ­funding much of the research conducted after defending the dissertation. When he served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Terrence Seethoff enthusiastically approved a semester with a reduced teaching load so I could complete a draft of this manuscript. My former department head, Russell Magnaghi, took an interest in my work, provided me with a steady stream of encouragement, and advocated for resources on my behalf. I likewise am indebted to my former colleagues in the department of history, Chet Defonso, Robbie Goodrich, Keith Kendall, Gabe Logan, Rebecca Mead, and Alan Willis, who cultivated an intellectual environment and approved supplemental department research funds. I especially thank Gabe and Becky, who offered comments on an early chapter draft and are good friends. Members of the campus writing group I belong to likewise deserve recognition for keeping me focused on my goals: Michael Joy, Rebecca Ulland, Maya Sen, Kate Teeter, Derrick Anderson, Mollie Freier, Sara Jane Tompkins, and Rachel Jorgensen. I also would be remiss if I did not recognize the contributions of April Bertucci, Lara Clisch, and the many student workers in the history office who did yeoman’s work helping me with various tasks from photocopying to navigating the university’s reimbursement protocols. Several archives provided grants so I could visit their repositories both while writing the dissertation and while conducting subsequent research. Over the years, the Filson Historical Society in Louisville granted me two Filson Fellowships, the Kentucky Historical Society offered a general research grant, and the William L. Clements Library awarded me a Jacob M. Price Visiting ix

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Research Fellowship. In addition to these institutions, I visited the Cincinnati Historical Society Library, the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana State Library, the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, the Lilly Library, the Library of Congress, the National Archives in Washington, DC, and Library and Archives Canada. The staffs at these archives patiently answered many questions and guided me to many invaluable documents. I also deeply appreciate the efforts of the library staff at the Olson Library at Northern Michigan University for helping me obtain monographs and other resources I desperately needed, especially Michelle Kimball, who did not pressure me to return grossly overdue interlibrary loan materials. Several people prompted me to rethink significant parts of my argument over the years. At the University of Cincinnati, I was lucky to meet Wayne Durrill, who became my adviser and friend. He has been there whenever I needed him and championed my career in immeasurable ways. I remain intellectually indebted to him. Along with Wayne, I thank Chris Phillips, Geoffrey Plank, and Drew Cayton for serving on my dissertation committee. I wish to thank Wayne, Drew, Joseph P. Ferrie, John Larson, and anonymous readers for comments on earlier versions of chapters and the manuscript. This project made its way to publication with the help of several people and institutions. Passages in Chapters 1, 2, and 4 previously appeared in two journal articles, “A ‘Commercial View of This Unfortunate War’: Economic Roots of an American National State in the Ohio Valley, 1775–1795,” in Early American Studies (Spring 2008), and “Delivering a Nation through the Mail: The Post Office in the Ohio Valley, 1789–1815” in Ohio Valley History (Fall 2008). I am grateful to the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and the Filson Historical Society and Cincinnati Museum Center for granting permission to use material from my articles. If it were not for Cameron Fuess and Greenstone Mapping, this book would have crude, hand-drawn maps of my own creation rather than professional illustrations. Ultimately I owe much to Eric Crahan, editor at Cambridge University Press, who demonstrated enthusiasm for this project. I am grateful to him and all the others at the Press who shepherded this manuscript through the review and publication process. Over the years my family has provided me encouragement and emotional support. I have inscribed this book to my parents for all they have given me. At one time or another each member of my family endured – without serious complaint  – unprompted, rambling anecdotes about the research and writing process. For that I offer my appreciation. Adam Chill has been a constant friend, though we have lived far apart for many years. Our discussions helped me clarify my thoughts on argumentative elements of this project. More than anyone else, Lara Schaefer, to whom I also dedicate this book, witnessed my struggles bringing this book to print and was a font of support. Perhaps more important, she made numerous sacrifices so I could pursue my interests. I sing her praises on many fronts, but here I thank her for tolerating my incessant preoccupation with this project. I also owe apologies to Ernie, Buster, and Dea for being away from home so often.

Introduction

In December 1804, Thomas Jefferson sent a recently concluded treaty with the Sauk and Fox Indians to the Senate for ratification. His accompanying communiqué briefly argued that the accord strengthened the ability of the United States to govern “those Indians by commerce rather than by Arms.”1 Jefferson, like so many policy makers of his day, viewed trade and warfare as two strategies to shape U.S. relations with Native American nations. Although he likely did not mean to do so at the time, Jefferson’s pithy reflection on methods of commerce and arms captured a broad federal approach to the early trans-Appalachian West. Since 1789, the federal government had deployed fiscal and military powers granted to it by the Constitution to transform the early western economy through land acquisitions, infrastructure, commerce, and communication. In doing so, the federal government expanded its bureaucratic institutions into the West, bridging geographic and political obstacles created by the Appalachian Mountains, and fostered early commercial capitalism there. Some economic changes occurred directly as the result of federal policy, such as when the United States went to war against Native Americans and purchased provisions and other matériel for its military. Others occurred incidentally as states and local communities worked to transform their own infrastructures and economies to benefit from federal money injected into the region. By both intent and accident, federal policy exercised through its institutions sowed seeds of commercial capitalism in the West, which bore fruit during the nineteenth century. This is not a traditional rendering of American expansionism. Most people, scholars included, rarely view the federal government as an important player in 1

Thomas Jefferson to the Senate, December 31, 1804, and Articles of a Treaty, November 3, 1804, American State Papers, Indian Affairs (hereafter Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af.), 1: 693–4.

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Introduction

the development of the trans-Appalachian West.2 Rather they envision a country largely devoid of a powerful national government, with spontaneous, opportunistic, egalitarian, and racist forces shaping the early nation.3 Turnerian echoes of resilient pioneers pressing into a wilderness and transforming hard-scrabble frontier into a bastion of liberty remain in contemporary scholarship even if those frontiersmen are viewed with a more critical eye for the violence they perpetrated.4 Such histories serve to emphasize American exceptionalism and overstate historic American anxieties of powerful, dangerous, and inefficient government.5 The American National State and the Early West seeks to transform this narrative by bringing the national state back into the story.6 Rather than view the transformation of the early West as the product of laissez-faire, liberalism, state ineptitude, or complacency, this work explores the variegated ways the federal government contributed to western expansion by cultivating ­partnerships with state governments and local businesses, thereby fostering a commercial economy. In doing so, this book adds to a growing literature that reveals, in the words of historian William Novak, an American state “more powerful, capacious, tenacious, interventionist, and redistributive” than commonly recognized.7 And because expansionism became a central theme of the state-building exercise throughout the early republic, revealing the role of the federal government in the early West offers insight into the development of the national state more broadly. A successful republic, expansionist or not, was not inevitable. At its ­inception in 1776, differences between the newly confederated states tended to overwhelm any similarities beyond the common revolution against Great Britain. The first national state constructed by the founding fathers, under the aegis of the Articles of Confederation, reflected a sense of internationalism rather The role of the federal government has been explored far more for the trans-Mississippi West. Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987). 3 Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); John D. Barnhart, Valley of Democracy: The Frontier versus the Plantation in the Ohio Valley, 1775–1818 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1953). 4 Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600– 1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973). For a critique of recent Turnerian interpretations, see Larry F. Kutchen, “The Neo-Turnerian Frontier,” review of From the Fallen Tree: Frontier Narratives, Environmental Politics, and the Roots of National Pastoral, 1749– 1826, by Thomas Hallock, Early American Literature, vol. 40, no. 1 (2005), 163–71. 5 Robert E. Wright and Brian P. Murphy, “The Private Provision of Transportation Infrastructure in Antebellum America: Lessons and Warnings,” Social Science Research Network . 6 Theda Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back In: Current Research,” in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 3–43. 7 William Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review (hereafter AHR), vol. 113, no. 3 (June 2008), 758. 2

Introduction

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than nationalism (here referring to a centralized government, not an affective identity) embraced by its framers.8 After years of struggling through a postwar depression, witnessing Congress’s inability to repay lingering wartime debts, experiencing a weak international standing, and worrying about potential disunion, among other perceived ills, nationalists met in Philadelphia to write the Constitution.9 The new government made the national state stronger than its predecessor because it possessed fiscal and military powers it could wield for purposes of defense, commerce, and foreign policy.10 Bureaucratic institutions erected under it became instruments for political and economic change.11 Today, scholars recognize the military as one of the most important bureaucratic institutions for state building.12 Most history textbooks implicitly reflect this understanding when they refer to President Washington’s nationalization of the militia to put down the Whiskey Rebellion and consequential certification of national state fiscal authority through the threat of military force.13 The federal government also deployed the military for the benefit of western ­settlers, as was the case when it sent a force against Indians in the Ohio country. This action signaled to those settlers the commitment of the federal government to the region at a moment when local disintegrationist forces threatened national state integrationist designs.14 David C. Hendrickson, “The First Union: Nationalism versus Internationalism in the American Revolution” in Eliga H. Gould and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 35–53; John M. Murrin, “A Roof without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity,” in Richard R. Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward Carlos Carter, eds., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 333–48. 9 Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781–1789 (New York: Harper & Row, 1987). 10 Max Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 11 Richard R. John, “Government Institutions as Agents of Change: Rethinking American Political Development in the Early Republic, 1787–1835,” Studies in American Political Development, vol. 11 (Fall 1997), 347–80. 12 Ira Katznelson, “Flexible Capacity: The Military and Early American Statebuilding,” in Ira Katznelson and Martin Shefter, eds., Shaped by War and Trade: International Influences on American Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 82–110. For treatments dealing with later eras see Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 13 Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 14 Andrew R. L. Cayton, “‘Separate Interests’ and the Nation-State: The Washington Administration and the Origins of Regionalism in the Trans-Appalachian West,” Journal of American History (hereafter JAH), vol. 79 (June 1992), 39–67; Andrew R. L. Cayton, “Radicals in the ‘Western World’: The Federalist Conquest of Trans-Appalachian North America,” in Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg, eds., Federalists Reconsidered (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 77–96. 8

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Introduction

State-building efforts went far beyond the military. National public works projects endorsed by Congress and presidential administrations radiated communication and commercial networks across the states.15 Similarly, the Post Office produced a national informational network, which facilitated communication while also engendering a sense of a national “imagined community.”16 Transactions between merchants and customs house officials dovetailed mutual national and local interests.17 As bureaucracy expanded, the three branches of government wrote a body of administrative law to preserve national state authority as it diffused across the bureaucratic landscape.18 Institutional development of the federal government had significant implications in the early West. There, local commerce and local institutions emerged and crystallized alongside federal institutions of one sort or another, at times harmoniously and at others contentiously.19 Because nationalists sought an integrated union, an expansion of federal institutions was critical to asserting federal sovereignty in newly opened areas. Indeed, for more than a century, the struggle among European powers to control the Ohio Valley had in part been one of establishing and legitimating sovereignty.20 The early United States continued this trend but far more assertively brought national state discipline to bear on people who lived at the geographic and practical limits of its power.21 John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1960); Stephen Minicucci, “Internal Improvements and the Union, 1790–1860,” in Studies in American Political Development, vol. 18 (Fall 2004), 160–85; Stephen Minicucci, “The ‘Cement of Interest’: Interest-Based Models of Nation-Building in the Early Republic,” Social Science History, vol. 25 (Summer 2001), 247–74. 16 Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Richard B. Kielbowicz, News in the Mail: The Press, Post Office, and Public Information, 1700–1860 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989). 17 Gautham Rao, “The Creation of the American State: Customhouses, Law, and Commerce in the Age of Revolution” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2008). 18 Jerry L. Mashaw, “Recovering American Administrative Law: Federalist Foundation, 1787– 1801,” Yale Law Journal, vol. 115 (April 2006), 1256–1344. For administrative strategies, see Leonard D. White, The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History (New York: Macmillan, 1948); Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1801–1829 (New York: Macmillan, 1951). 19 Andrew R. L. Cayton, The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780– 1825 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986); Daniel J. Elazar, The American Partnership: Intergovernmental Co-operation in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 20 Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007); Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 21 Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500–2000 (New York: Viking, 2005). 15

Introduction

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Such an institutional expansion dovetailed with ideological and practical efforts to integrate new territories into the union and preserve the republic. Creating new states meant orchestrating institutional expansionism with the federal government as conductor.22 After 1789, Federalists especially wanted to encourage growth of the national economy, which they hoped would bind together its corners in a “union of interests.”23 The economic roots of this agenda lay in a fundamental problem of the early republic. Although the Constitution established a national government, little affective nationalism existed to wed people to the country and thus preserve the republic. Economic and institutional expansion, in this line of ­thinking, would accomplish the same, or something similar, in its stead. Alexander Hamilton and Tench Coxe likely had this in mind in 1791 when they considered invoking Adam Smith’s arguments about the role of internal improvements to link “country” and “town” as they wrote early drafts of the “Report on Manufactures.”24 It should come as little surprise that the federal government therefore would take a strong hand in shaping new territories in both the Northwest and Southwest to preserve the republic through economic integration.25 Westerners readily identified the close relationship between local economic growth and federal policies. From Ohio in 1811, Benjamin Van Cleve argued that a post road in the western part of the state would enhance settlement and the economy of the region.26 Such an awareness that the national state could serve as patron to local economic development through its institutions evidenced the efficacy of such policies. John Sloane, a representative from Ohio, Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington: ­Indiana University Press, 1987); Peter S. Onuf, The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775–1787 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983); Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman, The Constitution of Empire: Territorial Expansion and American Legal History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Jack N. Rakove, “Ambiguous Achievement: The Northwest Ordinance,” in Frederick D. Williams, ed., The Northwest Ordinance: Essays on Its Formulation, Provisions, and Legacy (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1989), 1–19. 23 Cathy D. Matson and Peter S. Onuf, A Union of Interests: Political and Economic Thought in Revolutionary America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990). 24 Alexander Hamilton’s First Draft of the Report on the Subject of Manufactures, Tench Coxe’s Draft of the Report on the Subject of Manufactures, and Alexander Hamilton’s Third Draft of the Report on the Subject of Manufactures, in Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol 10, ed. Harold C. Syrett (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 20, 39, 116. 25 For the influence of the federal government in the Old Southwest, see Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Angela Pulley Hudson, Creek Paths and Federal Roads: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves and the Making of the American South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 26 Benjamin Van Cleve to Thomas Worthington, August 31, 1811, Papers of Thomas Worthington, 1795–1827, Archives and Library of the Ohio Historical Society (hereafter OHS), Columbus, OH. 22

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Introduction

saw local economic issues as pieces within a national puzzle; local projects represented a “national object” in the “interest not only of this State but of the whole union.”27 Although the federal government did not install a litany of economic regulatory measures on state governments and local communities during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it did pursue policies that interacted with local and regional economies and influenced the distribution and exchange of private property. Nowhere was this more the case than in the early West, where many new settlers relied on government bureaucracy from the military to the Post Office as outlets for local goods, as well as investors in infrastructure, communication networks, and new land acquisitions. If the emergence of a market economy during the first half of the nineteenth century was a cultural shift from subsistence economies rooted in individual landownership to commercial agriculture and manufacturing, then the federal government shouldered the risk and expense for opening up new lands by way of wars and treaties with Native Americans.28 It also contributed by encouraging commercial production, especially in support of the wars, in lands already opened up to settlement. Moreover, if a measure of the emergence of a market economy is based in the convergence and synchronicity of prices, then federal fiscal power deployed to improve communication and transportation networks added to farmers’ choices of where and when to sell surplus crops.29 Because the first permanent white American settlers in the Ohio Valley brought with them a proclivity for commercial consumption forged in their involvement in the trans-Atlantic British economy, federal projects affecting production paired with consumptional attitudes to provide a foundation for commercial growth, even if a capitalist economy had not emerged.30 In this way, threads of entrepreneurial enterprise and public policy wove together and augmented each other John Sloan to Thomas Worthington, January 25, 1805, folder 1, box 3, and January 24, 1811, folder 5, box 4, Papers of Thomas Worthington, OHS. 28 Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Allan Kulikoff, From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Allan Kulikoff, The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992); Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780–1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); Michael Merrill, “Cash Is Good to Eat: Self-Sufficiency and Exchange in the Rural Economy of the United States,” Radical History Review, vol. 4 (1977), 42–71; James A. Henretta, “Families and Farms: Mentalité in Pre-Industrial America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series (hereafter WMQ), vol. 35 (Jan. 1978), 3–32. 29 Winifred Barr Rothenberg, From Market-Places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts, 1750–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York: Rinehart & Company, 1951); Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1960). 30 Elizabeth A. Perkins, “The Consumer Frontier: Household Consumption in Early Kentucky,” JAH, vol. 78, no. 2 (Sept. 1991), 486–510; T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 27

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to create a complex fabric of regional economic development much stronger than the sum of its parts.31 The national state that emerged by the end of the War of 1812 was a powerful and influential one. More than a government of “courts and parties,” the federal bureaucracy lending weight to the nation was concentrated, penetrative, centralized, and specialized.32 Yet paradoxically, most Americans did not view it as such. Even Tocqueville characterized American government as an “­invisible machine.”33 How could this be?34 One reason is that while the influence of the federal government was most visible in the territories, it appeared far less so in the new states.35 Nevertheless, much of the strength of the federal bureaucracy remained in its marriage with the economy. Its marks were pervasive in the landscape but more often overshadowed by flashy state politics and local boosterism.36 National government was quite noticeable during war, but in the minds of most Americans its peacetime activities were tucked away to the less attractive recesses of administrative deliberation and action. Visibility, however, is not a good measure of a strong government. Such an assessment rather should be made based on the ability of government to accomplish desired and achievable goals within its limits of power.37 With this measure, we must view the government, especially its administrative capacity, as strong for its ability to foster a commercial economy through the appropriation of land, distribution of fiscal resources of the national state, shouldering the risk of exploration and discovery of resources, and developing an infrastructure. The bulk of this William J. Novak, “Public Economy and the Well-Ordered Market: Law and Economic Regulation in 19th-Century America,” Law & Social Inquiry vol. 18 (Winter 1993), 1–32; Oscar ­Handlin and Mary Flug Handlin, Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts, 1774–1861 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969); Louis Hartz, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776– 1860 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948). 32 The language used here comes from Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 20. For similar arguments regarding the early republic, see Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan. For a supporting argument for this statement, see Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). 33 Quoted in Skowronek, Building a New American State, 6. 34 Tocqueville was far more interested in political aspects of American life than administrative ones. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. and ed. by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 90. 35 Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in NineteenthCentury America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), especially chapter 5. 36 For the vibrant political culture, see Donald Ratcliffe, Party Spirit in a Frontier Republic: Democratic Politics in Ohio, 1793–1821 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998). 37 John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), xix–xx. 31

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Introduction

work was accomplished via federal institutions scattered ­throughout the West. In Kentucky and Ohio after statehood, many, but not all, of the benefits of this investment fell to the states or were privatized, though national state efforts continued, and not only in Indian country. Energy to accomplish these tasks came from many forces internal to the United States and from the decisions and actions made in Indian country and British Canada, among others. British plans for Canada and Native American responses to American expansionism provided a context for the decisions federal policymakers made. Therefore a regional perspective will be deployed to better understand the contingent nature of American institutional expansion.38 Similar to U.S. hopes to integrate the West into the national state system through economic change, Britain wanted to see early western Canada (the southern Great Lakes) transformed into a province sustained by commercial agriculture and woven into its trans-Atlantic empire, which thrived despite the loss of the American colonies.39 United States expansionism represented both a threat and potential boon for the Canadian West. Decisions made in Whitehall, as well as those arrived at provincially, shaped and were shaped by their American counterparts. By the early 1790s, Native Americans in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes witnessed two expansive settler zones wedging into their territories. Choices made by Native American individuals, families, clans, moieties, villages, tribes (nations), and intertribal confederacies reflected exigencies both within and without their control.40 Relationships they constructed with federal and Canadian institutions signaled manifold attempts to retain autonomy in a politically and François Furstenberg, “The Significance of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier in Atlantic History,” AHR, vol. 113, (June 2008), 647–77; White, The Middle Ground; Hinderaker, Elusive Empires; Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Knopf, 2006); John J. Bukowczyk, Nora Faires, David R. Smith, and Randy William Widdis, Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650–1990 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005); Kim M. Gruenwald, River of Enterprise: The Commercial Origins of Regional Identity in the Ohio Valley, 1790– 1850 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson, eds., The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754–1814 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001). 39 Donald Creighton, The Empire of the St. Lawrence (Toronto: Macmillan Company of Canada, 1965; orig. pub. The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, 1760–1850 [1937]); Douglas ­McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784–1870 (­Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (New York: Longman, 1989). 40 This work relies on the arguments provided in a number of ethnohistorical monographs, especially C. A. Weslager, Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1972); James H. Howard, Shawnee! The Ceremonialism of a Native Indian Tribe and Its Cultural Background (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981); John Sugden, Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000); John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997); Stewart Rafert, The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People, 1654–1994 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1996). 38

Introduction

9

economically dynamic region. Like their colonial forebears, American agents constructed a bureaucratic system to control and cater to Native Americans.41 Federal agents across the administrative hierarchy responded to and attempted to anticipate their decisions. Together these three groups, internally diverse as they were, defined the nature of national state institutional expansion into and the economic transformation of the trans-Appalachian West. This study examines the role of the federal government in the western economy from 1775 through 1815 by exploring the roles its bureaucratic institutions played in the process. Chapter 1 begins with the dissolution of British authority in the West on the eve of the Revolutionary War and then traces the transformation of the ensuing property war between settlers and Indians from local and state control to federal control. Chapter 2 examines the interplay between the federal military in the Ohio Valley and the local economy while also considering how Native Americans and British administrators in Canada responded to the conflict and how those decisions affected their economies. The third chapter investigates the struggle to define a new economy and emergent bordered land in the Ohio country in the months following the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The next two chapters look at the continuing role of the federal government in the Ohio Valley and southern Great Lakes from 1795 through the first decade of the nineteenth century. Chapter 4 focuses on the expansion of national-state institutions in settler territory while Chapter 5 scrutinizes the endeavors of federal institutions in Indian country both to transform the Native American economy and to prepare territories for resource exploitation. Chapter 6 closes the book by examining the role of federal institutions in precipitating the War of 1812 in the West and the elaboration of relationships between the federal government and the regional economy during that conflict. A note on word usage. For the purpose of accessibility, I have chosen to use anglicized names for Indian nations rather than their own self-referential identifiers. When discussing aboriginal peoples in general, Indian and Native American are used interchangeably, as are tribe and nation despite the different connotations invoked by each. The notation Indian country is used to describe unceded territories. Even though Indian country conveys a sense of singularity, it was not. As will be seen, territorial control and ownership was highly contested and fractured. Although I recognize that Native Americans and British subjects in North America fall under the broader domain American, for convenience I have reserved that word for white settlers in territories of the United James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, ­Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975); Richard White, Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983); White, Middle Ground; Colin G. Calloway, Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783–1815 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987).

41

10

Introduction

States. Settler too is used for expediency. Just as easily, settler could be used to describe Native Americans establishing new towns. Additionally, as one of my colleagues reminds me, “unsettler” might be more accurate given the disruptive behavior they brought to the region on so many fronts. Throughout the text, trans-Appalachian West and Northwest denote lands including the Ohio Valley watershed north to the southern shore of Lake Erie and southwestern Lake Ontario, while Southwest means the borderland from Georgia to the Mississippi. Finally, in much recent literature, nationalism captures an ­affective identity associated with the creation of an imagined national community. Here, unless otherwise noted, it refers more simply to support for a strong, ­centralized national government. In a sense: national-ism in contrast to the decentralization associated with strict federalism.

1 Property War

On April 4, 1788, Harry Innes complained to his friend, Virginia ­congressman John Brown, about the chronic war between Kentuckians and Native Americans north of the Ohio River. Innes related how warriors “duly deprived [settlers] of their property” by stealing horses and other livestock, killing or kidnapping slaves, burning homes, sinking boats on the region’s rivers, and killing settlers. Already that year, “Merchandise to the Value of above £3,000” had been taken or destroyed, he claimed.1 Since 1775, as increasing numbers of settlers moved into Kentucky, not only had the type of violence against property that Innes described become a common tactic deployed by Native Americans, the frequency and intensity of its use had escalated in kind. Native Americans sought to preserve their productive hunting lands, which invading settlers perceived as open territory. Settlers responded in turn by launching assaults on Native American villages and agricultural fields. Within the contested space of the Ohio Valley, a broad property war ensued as contending parties attempted to define how land would be used and who would determine the economic future of the region. Around the time that Innes wrote his letter, Native Americans and American settlers became disillusioned with the local nature of the conflict and began to embrace a broader use of confederated resources, though in strikingly different ways. The origins of the conflict Innes described had deep roots traced along the violent paths of English colonial expansion during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning in incipient communities at Jamestown, Plymouth, Boston, and others, colonial leaders pressed Indian neighbors for land cessions to open doors for further European settlement. While these largely English 1

Harry Innes to John Brown, April 4, 1788, Correspondence 1788, Harry Innes Papers, Manuscript Division, James Madison Memorial Building, Library of Congress (hereafter LOC), Washington, DC.

11

12

The American National State and the Early West

settlers might have chosen to construct heterogeneous communities ­embracing European and Native American cooperation, they instead tended to form communities differentiated by race, culture, and economy. The opening of lands for colonists meant the dislocation of the native inhabitants. Violence, coercion, and intimidation became normative tools for Europeans to remove Indians with treaties serving as a legitimizing veneer. Far from passive agents, Native Americans retaliated against European competition for their resources and asserted their political and economic autonomy. Agents of colonial competition came in many guises, including hunters, traders, missionaries, imperial agents, yeomen farmers, commercial agrarians, and husbandmen, among others. While some tribes east of the Appalachians survived through strategies including accommodation, assimilation, diplomatic savvy, military success, and geographic happenstance, other communities either chose to relocate or departed under force. Members of Indian communities rarely chose one strategy, instead preferring to pursue a number of different approaches simultaneously. The matrix selected often blended a body of their ideals and a set of distasteful circumstances reluctantly swallowed.2 By the last third of the eighteenth century, struggles between Native Americans and European settlers along the eastern seaboard contributed to the transformation of the Ohio Valley and southern Great Lakes into a culturally diverse region. From west of Lake Michigan, Miami-speaking peoples, which included Miamis, Weas, and Piankeshaws, relocated to northern Indiana and Ohio, having been pushed out as refugees by the expanding Iroquois confederacy during the seventeenth century.3 Potawatomis evacuated their ancestral homelands to the east for the same reason, moving from territories west of Lake Michigan to south and east of Lake Michigan.4 As the military power of the Iroquois confederacy waned in the trans-Appalachian West at the end of the seventeenth century, Algonquian communities occupied the relatively sparsely populated area in the eastern Ohio country.5 As opportunities to engage in Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Colin G. Calloway, New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); W. J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534–1760 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969); Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996); William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983); Jill Lapore, The Name of War: King Phillip’s War and the Origins of America Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1998). 3 Stewart Rafert, The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People, 1654–1994 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1996), 8–9. 4 R. David Edmunds, Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 15. 5 Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 215. 2

Property War

13

the fur trade with the French increased at the end of the century, Ojibwa ­communities pressed south to the lower Great Lakes.6 Various Shawnee communities emigrated to the middle Ohio Valley, some from the upper Ohio River and others from closer to the Mississippi River. Some remained in the region permanently, while others decided to move to the south or farther east, only to return later.7 Shawnee families who joined Delaware communities were among them, departing lands in the Delaware and Susquehanna valleys in response to British colonial population pressures.8 All these groups and more competed for land and resources along with the remaining Iroquoian communities, including Mingos, Senecas, and Wyandots (Hurons). Despite the ethnic and cultural diversity, productive practices among these Indian communities were quite similar. To a greater or lesser extent, the Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandot, Ottawa, Miami, Piankshaw, Wea, and Potawatomi all engaged in a semi-sedentary, semi-subsistence trade economy rooted in agriculture and hunting. Because patterns of agriculture, petty manufacturing, and trade remained locally constructed, the relative balance between of these factors could vary even within each nation. Towns, villages, and families made decisions on where to live, with whom to trade, how to distribute labor, and where to hunt. Economic exchanges occurred through diverse people, including kith and kin, traders who crafted personal relationships with local communities, impersonal itinerant traders, and government officials. Some communities and individuals traded more than their neighbors; others dedicated greater resources to hunting or agriculture.9 Because Indian communities tended to fuse social and political meaning with trade, rituals of exchange often cemented or repaired reciprocal personal obligations, binding individuals and communities with their imperial partners. Although Great Lakes Native Americans constructed such multilayered reciprocal relationships with French traders and military officials, these relationships were forged less successfully with the British after France relinquished its North American imperial claims following the Seven Years War.10 Although exchange in the middle ground – to use Richard White’s designation – often held chorded meaning, years of experience dealing with Europeans meant that, at times, trade could mean little more than the narrow commercial exchange of goods. But rarely did Native American men or women attempt to Peter S. Schmalz, The Ojibwa of Southern Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 18. 7 James H. Howard, Shawnee! The Ceremonialism of a Native Indian Tribe and Its Cultural Background (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981), 6–8. 8 Amy C. Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), esp. chaps. 2–4. 9 See for instance, Bert Anson, The Miami Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 31. 10 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes ­Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), x, 50–3. 6

14

The American National State and the Early West

maximize economic gain in a capitalist sense. Instead, they tended to pursue a level of labor and income that satisfied their needs and wants without detracting from their social and leisurely pursuits.11 By the end of the eighteenth century, Indian country in the Ohio Valley and southern Great Lakes region was a complex, mixed subsistence and commercial economy that closely wove its communities into the fabric of surrounding villages, British and French traders located throughout the watersheds, and the larger trans-Atlantic economy. The agricultural cycle helped shape labor patterns in most communities. The growing season from the Ohio Valley north to the southern portions of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ontario typically allowed 140 frost-free days.12 The yearly cycle began with spring planting and closed with the winter hunts. Gender roles demarcated labor responsibilities among Native American communities. Women principally controlled a community’s agricultural pursuits beginning with determining where to plant crops, which likewise influenced where a community resided.13 In the spring, they cleared land by cutting and girdling trees, burning the underbrush when necessary.14 Under an open canopy, women planted domesticated vegetables such as corn, squash, beans, peas, sunflowers, tobacco, and pumpkins, at times on raised beds to protect against the frost.15 Depending on the community, plots of land as small as one-half acre or as large as several acres might be distributed to individual families or clans.16 During the summer, women weeded and hilled corn while also gathering wild nuts, fruits, vegetables, and roots to supplement the diets of their families. When needed, women could call on the labor of men to make sure that planting and harvesting occurred in a timely manner.17 Hunting performed by men complemented the agricultural pursuits of the women. Men fished and hunted an assortment of animals, including turkey, deer, bison, raccoon, foxes, See for instance, Jeanne Kay, “Wisconsin Indian Hunting Patterns, 1634–1836,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 69, (Sept. 1979), 402–18. 12 Helen Hornbeck Tanner, ed., Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 19. 13 Anson, Miami Indians, 21; Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys, 14–5; C. A. Weslager, Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 57. 14 Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys, 17; Edmunds, Potawatomis, 18–19, 22–3; Howard, Shawnee! 48–9. 15 R. Douglas Hurt, Indian Agriculture in America: Prehistory to the Present (University Press of Kansas, 1987), 33, 36–7; William E. Doolittle, Cultivated Landscapes of North America (­Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 50, 58, 92–3, 437; Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 78–83; William W. Warren, History of the Ojibway People (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1984; rpt. 1885), 97, 299; Howard, Shawnee!, 53. 16 Hurt, Indian Agriculture in America, 67; Sissel Schroeder, “Maize Productivity in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains of North America,” American Antiquity, vol. 64 (July 1999), 508, 510. 17 Hurt, Indian Agriculture in America, 67; Rafert, Miami Indians of Indiana, 12; Edmunds, Potawatomis, 15–6. 11

Property War

15

elk, and wolves, with diverse techniques that included firearms, archery, and trapping.18 During the summer and winter, large and small game added to their subsistence. Hunting and warfare were so central to men’s roles in their communities that their skills in these areas were both defining elements of their sense of manhood and contributing factors establishing hierarchies among their male peers and within their home community.19 In the late autumn, after the harvest, most of the village moved to winter hunting grounds. There men spent much of their time setting traps and following herds of fur-bearing animals, returning to camp to deposit their catch. Women and young children at camp worked to slaughter carcasses and clean hides so pelts would be ready to sell in the spring.20 As winter began to break, some families returned to the village while others went to sugar camps to tap maple trees and make maple sugar, which they used for personal consumption and trade.21 As the ground thawed, women cleared land for planting and the yearly labor cycle began anew. Traders traveling from village to town acquired beadwork, clothing made from European fabrics by Native American laborers, as well as furs, pelts, sugar, and agricultural goods.22 Although male components of the fur trade occupy much interest for historians, by the late eighteenth century women played a central role in its implementation.23 Their agricultural labors not only nourished traders and facilitated the diplomacy of trade but also provided goods for exchange. Women possessed power, though not always exclusively, to determine where communities located and also the parameters of trading and diplomatic relationships on which the fur trade rested.24 At a council held at Post Vincennes in 1792 between Eel River Indians, Weas, Potawatomis, Kickapoos, Kaskaskians, and an American delegation, female elders, or “Queens” as characterized by the American agent, presented pipes and strings of wampum through their male speakers. Although Donald E. Worcester and Thomas F. Schilz, “The Spread of Firearms among the Indians on the Anglo-French Frontiers,” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 8, (Spring 1984), 103–15; Joseph Hadfield, “Observations upon the commerce of Canada; particularly that part, which explains the Indian Fur Trade, 1785[?]” Native American Collection, William L. Clements Library (hereafter WLC), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Armstrong Starkey, European and Native American Warfare, 1675–1815 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 21; Rafert, Miami Indians of Indiana, 13–4; Howard, Shawnee!, 47–8. 19 Nathaniel Sheidley, “Hunting and the Politics of Masculinity in Cherokee Treaty-Making, 1763– 1775,” in Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern, eds., Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 167–85. 20 Howard, Shawnee!, 44; Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys, 18; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 60–2. 21 Anson, Miami Indians, 22; Howard, Shawnee!, 54; Warren, History of the Ojibway People, 186. 22 Warren, History of the Ojibway People, 300–1. 23 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 76–7; Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties: ­Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670–1870 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980). 24 See for instance, Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys, 22. 18

16

The American National State and the Early West

male speakers dominated the dialogue, matriarchs lent their influence to the proceedings, at times quite visibly, as when the sister of a Wea chief instructed her brother to convey her wishes that “this land may no more be stained with blood. She desires you [Americans] to keep at a distance.”25 American deputations privileged male speakers because they fit better within European frameworks of patriarchal political authority. Such assumptions diluted the power of female elders in favor of men within villages by the end of the eighteenth century. Notwithstanding this broad and uneven gender shift, women remained figures of authority and influence, even if their presence is obscured in historical documents produced by white men. Within a diversified economy, the conveyance of pelts held a central place within Native American economic activities. When Algonquian men left to hunt, they often traveled to specific tracts of land whose use was restricted to only a few families.26 Hunters obtained their rights to the land and its animals through inheritance or conquest. Because hunting domains were often situated in unoccupied territory between settlements, which might be described as buffer zones, competition for the use of land could be fierce and claims controlled by families could overlap and be fluid.27 By the final third of the eighteenth century, numerous small buffer zones existed between the Ohio River and the southern Great Lakes, but two larger hunting areas bookended the region. A western buffer zone, which was contested among western Great Lakes Indian nations, including Ojibwa, Ottawa, and eastern Dakota, extended in an arc from the Chippewa River in Wisconsin to the Mississippi River and then in a roughly northwesterly direction leading to its headwaters.28 A second, larger buffer zone straddled most of Kentucky and parts of western West Virginia.29 Many Native American communities in the Ohio country and to the south, such as the Cherokee and Chickasaw, claimed hunting grounds in Kentucky A Journal of the Proceedings at a Council held with the Indians of the Wabash and Illinois at Post Vincents [sic], by Brigadier General Putnam, September 24, 1792, Rufus Putnam Papers, OHS. 26 Rolf Knight, “A Re-examination of Hunting, Trapping, and Territoriality among the Northeastern Algonkian Indians,” in Anthony Leeds and Andrew P. Vayda, eds., Man, Culture, and Animals: The Role of Animals in Human Ecological Adjustment (Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1965), 27. 27 Harold Hickerson, “The Virginia Deer and Intertribal Buffer Zones in the Upper Mississippi Valley,” in Anthony Leeds and Andrew P. Vayda, eds., Man, Culture, and Animals: The Role of Animals in Human Ecological Adjustment (Washington, DC: American Association for the ­Advancement of Science, 1965), 43. For another example of buffer zones, see Dan Flores, “­Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850,” Journal of American History, vol. 78 (Sept. 1991), 475–6. 28 Hickerson, “Virginia Deer and Intertribal Buffer Zones in the Upper Mississippi Valley,” 45; Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, 64. 29 Insert to “Memoirs of the Bruce Family,” July 12, 1853, William Bruce Memoirs, Manuscripts and Rare Books, Indiana State Library (hereafter ISL), Indianapolis, Indiana; Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, 68; Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724–1774 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 49. 25

Property War

17

and, as such, viewed them as productive land. As in other buffer zones, claims to territory needed to be defended from trespassers. When white hunters like Daniel Boone began to cross into the region during the 1760s, they represented competition for fur-bearing resources similar to encroaching Native American hunting parties. When one group of Shawnee, led by Captain Will (his English name), discovered Boone and his men in 1769, they politely warned the intruders not to return, telling them to “go home and stay there. Don’t come here any more, for this is the Indian’s hunting ground, and all the animals, skins and furs are ours.” To drive home his point, Captain Will confiscated all the pelts that Boone and his cohorts had collected during their eight-month hunt, as well as their horses. They took Boone prisoner the next day because he failed to leave as instructed.30 By culling furs, Boone had violated notions of usufruct rights guiding land use in the Ohio Valley. While Shawnee and other hunters acknowledged that any individual had a right to kill animals for sustenance, they understood that rights to furs remained with the individual or group who held rights to that territory.31 As Stephen Aron reveals, such land use concepts were remarkably similar between Ohio Valley Indians and backcountry whites, especially those from Virginia.32 Despite the dangers associated with hunting in Kentucky, white hunters made their way into the region more and more during the 1770s. Itinerant hunters sold their furs to regional mongers or, if they could get better prices, shipped their pelts to Spanish traders in the lower Mississippi River valley. Hunters who attempted to establish semi-permanent residences lived according to an ­agricultural cycle similar to Indians. As winter snows melted, ­settlers cleared fields, relying on slash and burn techniques deployed by their Native American neighbors. They practiced methods of scattering seed across unplowed fields in the same fashion as Native American women rather than using wooden plows.33 Instead of female kin bearing the burden of agricultural work, European tradition and colonial Virginia practice held that men and slaves performed field labor. Isolated early settlers often planted Indian corn because of its usefulness, with wheat, oats, barley, rye, buckwheat, pumpkins, beans, and peas supplementing their diet. All of these potential commodities and more could be used for barter.34 Summer brought less rigorous labor demands in the fields, Lyman Copeland Draper, “The Life of Boone,” 2B188, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, quoted in John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992), 81. 31 White, Middle Ground, 104. 32 Stephen Aron, “Pigs and Hunters: ‘Rights in the Woods’ on the Trans-Appalachian Frontier,” in Andrew R. L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 187–8. 33 Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 70. 34 Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 71; Reginald Horsman, The Frontier in the Formative Years, 1783–1815 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), 117–18. 30

18

The American National State and the Early West

allowing settlers time to cull game from forests and draw fish from streams, as well as construct rudimentary buildings and perform general maintenance on their property.35 A relative scarcity of women in the West did not mean that American men radically restructured their inherited concepts of gendered labor; hence, domestic work tended to be neglected. Autumn meant harvesting what crops remained after being eaten or destroyed by animals and weather. The first snows signaled the season of hunting, trapping, and property maintenance, which concluded with the approach of spring. As disturbing as white hunters were to Ohio country Indians, white settlers proved more alarming. Leaders of western Native American communities desired political and economic alliances with eastern colonists built upon trade, but wanted a limited permanent white presence. In 1771, rising Delaware leader Killbuck asserted that traders did not represent a problem so much as settler “incroachment into Our Country.”36 The presence of settlers was a relatively new phenomenon. At the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy relinquished their claims to the Ohio country, not only for themselves but also on behalf of Ohio Indians. Shawnee and Delaware leaders, incensed upon hearing the results of the treaty, disputed Iroquoian authority to make any such claim.37 British agents, pleased with the treaty, dismissed Ohio country Indian claims of autonomy. Although the treaty did not open the lands to settlement, some colonists viewed it as a pretext for a land grab. At a 1771 council, Killbuck upheld Delaware claims to the land and reminded the British agents sitting across from him that Parliament’s proclamation in 1763 limited colonial settlement to east of the Appalachian Mountains. To him, the lingering presence of the intruders could only be interpreted to mean that Britain “either could not or would not remove them.”38 Within a few years, the number of settlers moving to the Ohio Valley increased noticeably. In lieu of enforcing British promises to western Indians, imperial authorities competed for access to Ohio Valley land, abetting an “­emigrating Spirit of the Americans” rather than use their institutional power to restrain them.39 Noting an expanding settler population in the upper Horsman, Frontier in the Formative Years, 105. Copy of a Speech sent from the Chiefs of the Delawares, Munsies & Mohikins [sic] by a ­Deputation of the several Nations living on the Ohio, To the Governor of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, 1771, folder 13, box 1, Northwest Territory Collection, Indiana Historical Society (hereafter IHS). 37 Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724– 1774 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 256. 38 Copy of a Speech sent from the Chiefs of the Delawares, Munsies & Mohikins [sic] by a Deputation of the several Nations living on the Ohio, To the Governor of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, 1771, folder 13, box 1, Northwest Territory Collection, Library and Archives, Indiana Historical Society (hereafter IHS), Indianapolis, Indiana. 39 Lord Dunmore to Earl of Dartmouth, December 24, 1774, in Reuben Gold Thwaites and Louise Phelps Kellogg, eds., Documentary History of Dunmore’s War, 1774 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1905), 371. 35 36

Property War

19

Ohio River watershed in 1773, Virginia royal governor John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, proclaimed that his colony, not Pennsylvania, held sovereignty over the area and would bring order to the region.40 Dunmore’s attempt to appropriate western lands reflected selfish motivations to line his pockets and not a change in policy from Whitehall or the Virginia House of Burgesses.41 Based on the royal governor’s aggressive maneuvers to open western lands, eastern speculators, including notables like George Washington, and western settlers looking to improve their own land claims purchased lots in the Ohio country.42 As expected, Shawnee Indians and others responded to encroachments by asserting their rights to the land. When reports of Indian retaliatory assaults on white traders and settlers made their way to Dunmore’s office in 1773 and 1774, he authorized desultory expeditions, the largest of which was a raid that resulted in a military victory over a party of Shawnee Indians at Point Pleasant, where the Kanawha River empties into the Ohio River.43 Shawnee chief Cornstalk sued for a ceasefire, a move Dunmore interpreted as a decisive cession of land, but that other Shawnee refused to recognize as legitimate. Dunmore then worked to remove settlers and squatters, including some individuals who had fought for him. Dunmore’s War, as the ignoble contest was dubbed, unraveled the borderland. The royal governor’s aggressive effort to claim the upper Ohio Valley for both Virginia and his fellow speculators appeared to legitimize a broad expropriation of Indian lands. In the months that followed, Dunmore’s speculator cronies threatened people who settled on the newly gained lands, prompting white westerners to question the commitment of the empire to their interests.44 A wave of borderland resentment washed over the region as former allies and squatters, who had moved to the region believing that a more assertive imperial western policy had been initiated, now turned on Dunmore.45 Adding fuel to the fire, Parliament announced its continued enforcement of the Proclamation of 1763, issued the Quebec Act – effectively removing Ohio Valley lands from the hands of Virginians or Pennsylvanians – and announced additional policies designed to limit territorial access to colonists.46 In the wake of these decisions, Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 104–5. 41 Indeed Whitehall forbade settlement in the area. Robert S. Allen, His Majesty’s Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defense of Canada, 1774–1815 (Dundurn Press, 1992), 41; Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 193. 42 Griffin, American Leviathan, 106; Hanson’s Journal, April 18, 1774, Documentary History of Dunmore’s War, 114. 43 Lord Dunmore to Earl of Dartmouth, December 24, 1774, Documentary History of Dunmore’s War, 373–83. 44 Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 187. 45 Griffin, American Leviathan, 122; Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 194. 46 Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, & the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 35. 40

Map 1.  Rivers in the Trans-Appalachian West.

Property War

21

imperial sway in the borderland crumbled in the minds of westerners, as did limitations to settlement. The Transylvania Company pursued lands from the Cherokee, asking that nation to relinquish its claims to eastern and central Kentucky. The company obtained its treaty in 1775 and set to work to profit from their investment. That year, a young Isaac Shelby, who earned a commendation for his service in Dunmore’s War, began surveying in Kentucky for the Transylvania Company even as most Virginians cast their gaze toward the explosive revolutionary events unfolding in Massachusetts.47 Disintegration of British imperial rule during 1775 opened the door for emigrants to flood into the Kentucky District of Virginia. Along the eastern seaboard, erstwhile colonial assemblies attempted to fill the institutional vacuum created by independence, but they lacked the mechanisms and will to regulate the borderland. Much of the emigrant population in the West concentrated in the Bluegrass Region located in the central and northern areas of the state, from Louisville east to the foothills of the Appalachians and north toward Cincinnati. Slaves likewise accompanied their masters to the District, and in larger numbers than in earlier years, a trend the Virginia legislature fruitlessly sought to reverse.48 Unlike temporary camps of white hunters, the new waves of settlers sought to build more permanent communities. Although hunting remained a significant component of subsistence, agriculture and animal husbandry played a greater role in productive labor.49 This shift did more than alter labor practices; it changed the land. Whereas hunters relied on forests as a source for their pelts, these new settlers viewed those same trees as obstacles to be cleared.50 Many newcomers wanted to carve an agricultural and pastoral landscape out of what they viewed as the wastelands on the Virginia frontier. Because the lands appeared to their eyes as unused, they were ripe for the taking. Most settlers bought or squatted on small tracts of land, engaging in semisubsistence farming, while wealthier settlers purchased larger properties on which to grow corn and wheat. Both groups let hogs, cattle, and horses forage in forest and field. Others established businesses intended to cater to hunters and the emigrant population. Many salt licks, which had long attracted American and Native American hunters who preyed upon the game that frequented those sites, were commodified as entrepreneurial men made a profit selling salt to settlers, who used it as a preservative.51 Of course, harvesting a salt mine or Archibald Henderson, “Isaac Shelby Revolutionary Patriot and Border Hero,” North Carolina Booklet, vol. 16 (Jan. 1917), 128. 48 Isaac Shelby to George Thompson, November 14, 1788, George Thompson Papers, WLC. 49 Aron, “Pigs and Hunters,” 178. 50 Horsman, Frontier in the Formative Years, 116; Stephen Aron, How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996), 30–1, 42. 51 John A. Jakle, “Salt on the Ohio Valley Frontier, 1770–1820,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 59 (Dec. 1969), 695, 699. 47

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The American National State and the Early West

boiling down brine left salt makers and their equipment exposed to Native American hunting and raiding parties, who treated them the same as they did hunters like Daniel Boone.52 Indian men attempted to disband or destroy settlements and salt-making enterprises because their presence challenged Indian ownership of the land, displaced game populations, and disrupted the fur trade. Unfortunately for the warrior-hunters, their assaults on the property of white hunters and settlers failed to deter migration by American colonists to Kentucky. What had been a trickle of illegal settlers during the 1760s and early 1770s became a flood during and after the American Revolution. By 1790, Kentucky boasted a total population of 73,677, including 12,430 slaves.53 Overlapping forms of exchange emerged out of Kentucky’s mix of white hunting and husbandry economies. Most labor focused on producing food and items for personal consumption or to aid neighbors. These items held a use value devoid of comparative market value, and as such were usually bound up in reciprocal obligations that facilitated community and individual survival. At the same time, many people produced  – often in small quantities  – furs, crops, and other items intended for sale at local markets. Each of these goods possessed an exchange value determined by local custom, whether in barter or specie.54 For instance, “negroes or cash” could be used for payment of debts or in an exchange of commodities, as William Fleming did in 1780 when he “advertised 2400 acres of Kentucky lands for Negroes.”55 Merchants propped up this early consumer economy by supplying Ohio Valley families with manufactured goods purchased largely in the East.56 Such exchanges, which occurred unevenly throughout the region, generally had limited capitalist intent; individuals who sold crops and merchandise sought not to accumulate great wealth Horsman, Frontier in the Formative Years, 116; Aron, How the West Was Lost, 30–1, 42. Historical Census Browser, Geostat Center: Collections, University of Virginia Library, http:// fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/. 54 Similar patterns have been described elsewhere within an evolving historiography of the emergence of the market revolution. Michael Merrill, “Cash Is Good to Eat: Self-Sufficiency and Exchange in the Rural Economy of the United States,” Radical History Review vol. 4 (1977), 42–71; James A. Henretta, “Families and Farms: Mentalité in Pr-Industrial America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, vol. 35 (Jan. 1978), 15–17; Christopher Clark, “Household Economy, Market Exchange and the Rise of Capitalism in the Connecticut Valley, 1800–1860,” Journal of Social History, vol. 13 (Winter, 1979), 173–5; Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 54–7; John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 131–6; Allan Kulikoff, The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992), 15–16, 18–24. 55 Mary Daniel to her brother, December 25, 1783, Robert Emmett McDowell Collection, 1774– 1869, vol. 1: Bullitts Lick Papers, vol. 1, p. 7, Special Collections, Filson Historical Society (hereafter FHS), Louisville, Kentucky; William Fleming to Nancy Fleming, June 27, 1780, Fleming Family Papers (uncatalogued), FHS. 56 Elizabeth Perkins, “The Consumer Frontier: Household Consumption in Early Kentucky,” Journal of American History, vol. 78 (Sept. 1991), 486–510; Kulikoff, Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism, 46. 52 53

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but to achieve economic independence and competency.57 Still, as more people produced for and purchased from marketplaces, an understanding of exchange value became more regionally uniform and market forces had greater resonance in the population.58 Such economic developments added layers to frustrations felt by Ohio country Indians witnessing the invasion of emigrants. Some Indian leaders, like Cornstalk, attempted to navigate a peaceful path of coexistence with settlers. But for most, larger numbers and an increasingly visible presence of white emigrants moving into the region only strengthened their resolve. In 1785, Captain Johnny, a Shawnee chief, blended these sentiments when he argued that western nations, who were “People of one Colour . . . united,” held “no Objections to carry on Trade with Your [American] Traders, provided they do not attempt to settle in our Country.”59 Indeed, American traders continued to venture to Indian communities, but rising violence between Native American warriorhunters and white Ohio Valley settlements frequently disrupted and generally limited the elaboration of those relationships over time. This was the case in October 1786 when Sandusky Wyandot Chiefs Abraham Coon and Massayet Haire responded to the recent destruction of Shawnee villages by instructing General Superintendent of Indian Affairs Richard Butler not only to cease surveying in the area, which until recently they reluctantly tolerated, but also to halt all people attempting to visit them on “any sort of Business.”60 To defend their rights to land and resources against an onrush of settlers, Native Americans employed tactics to deter emigration to the heart of their hunting grounds. Certainly warriors killed settlers, but these deaths were only one part of a larger approach designed to discourage emigration and a planting of a settler economy. To that end, warriors targeted settlers’ livestock, tools, homes, and other material possessions. Indian men grabbed horses, cattle, and other valuable and accessible property, the loss of which caused settlers meaningful financial hardship. Illustrating that these actions were not limited to the machinery of agriculture, women at McConnell’s Station even reported the theft of the mundane by Indians who “got it all”: hemp-linen, cloaks, and other clothes.61 Militia lieutenants from Fayette, Woodford, and Mercer counties in Kentucky Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 73; Joyce Appleby, “Commercial Farming and the ‘Agrarian Myth’ in the Early Republic,” Journal of American History, vol. 68 (Mar. 1982), 845; Daniel Vickers, “Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., vol. 47 (Jan. 1990), 3–29. 58 Winifred Barr Rothenberg, From Market-Places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts, 1750–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 80–111. 59 A Council held at Wakilumkie, May 18, 1785 By the Chiefs of the Shawenese, Mingoes, Dellawares, & Cherokees, box 2, Native American Collection, WLC. 60 Abraham Coon and Massayet Haire to Richard Butler, October 28, 1786, vol. 4 (Aug. 16–Dec. 31, 1786), Harmar Papers, WLC. 61 Lucien, Beckner, ed., “Reverend John D. Shane’s Interview with Pioneer William Clinkenbeard,” Filson Club Historical Quarterly (hereafter FCHQ), vol. 2 (Apr. 1928), 119. 57

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wrote to the secretary of war in April 1790, complaining, “We almost every day receive accounts of their horrid murders on our defenseless frontiers. . . and the taking of horses and other property, to the ruin of a number of families.”62 In many ways, such tactics reflect the “Indian way of war” detailed by ­historian Armstrong Starkey. Rather than organizing large bodies of warriors, Indian men blurred conceptual lines between hunting and war. While ­Euro-Americans idealized formal military engagements with large corps of men, eastern Indian men favored smaller parties because they offered advantages of speed and mobility. Ambushes, raids, and quick retreats characterized their military actions, all of which offered warriors the greatest potential to achieve immediate goals while minimizing the potential for casualties in their ranks. Because the Indian way of war contrasted so sharply with European expectations, white observers occasionally condescendingly referred to their method as “skulking.”63 But this way of war went far beyond the human toll emphasized by Starkey and other scholars to include assaults on property. Certainly some of the choices made by warriors to attack property rather than people reflected the defensive nature of offensive maneuvers characteristic of an Indian way of war, as well as immediate and practical limitations to what they could accomplish given a field of battle on a particular day. But it also reveals a sense of what they felt they “must” and “should” do to achieve their goals of removing white settlers from the region.64 In this context, the war on property holds greater relevancy by revealing the conflict in the Ohio Valley to be about the economic transformation of the region as much as the presence of white settlers. Within such a property war, livestock was especially vulnerable. Petitions to the state government from the 1770s exhibit destroyed stock, as well as stolen horses and cattle.65 Like most early settler societies, emigrant groups in early Kentucky and the Ohio Valley were reluctant to fence in their livestock because of the expense and energy required to do so. This disinclination to fencing, however, left their animal investments prone to theft and liable to wander off, and thus they became easy targets for Indians. Perhaps no property in Kentucky caught the eyes of Indians more than horses. Christopher Greenup once complained to Judge Innes in May 1790 that “Indians stole four horses from Mr. Meaux.” The next month, a separate group of Indians “stole a Extract of a letter from the Lieutenants of the counties of Fayette, Woodford, and Mercer, to the Secretary of War, April 14, 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1:87. 63 Starkey, European and Native American Warfare, 18–19, 27. 64 The rubric of “can,” “must,” and “should,” which I deploy here and later in the chapter, is a transposition of the one established by Wayne E. Lee. Wayne E. Lee, “From Gentility to ­Atrocity: The Continental Army’s Ways of War,” Army History, no. 62 (Winter 2006), 6. 65 Petition No. 5 “Request of Hugh McGary for compensation for services rendered as a messenger to Fort Pitt,” and Petition No. 8 “Statement of grievances by inhabitants of Kentucky in regard to land laws and request for a remedy,” in Robertson, Petitions, 42, 45–6. 62

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number of horses, to the amount of sixteen,” which could not be recovered.66 Judge Harry Innes estimated that in the span of seven and a half years in the Danville area, “upwards of 20,000 horses have been taken and carried off, and other property, such as money, merchandise, household goods, and wearing apparel, have been carried off and destroyed,” goods valued at more than £15,000.67 Horses were one of the most versatile resources Indians and Kentucky farmers owned. Historians have well documented the significance of horses to Native Americans west of the Mississippi River, but only recently have they begun to realize the ways these animals became integrated into eastern Indian trade, labor, warfare, and ritual.68 For Kentucky farmers, horses provided much of the energy needed to run a farm. Without horses, clearing land became more time-consuming, fields could not be sown, goods could not be taken to market, and the transmission of information slowed to a crawl. But horses and cattle could also serve as cash in the specie-deprived market that typified the early West, as was the case when Sarah Graham of Bath County loaned her horses to hunters for “one-half the load” of game.69 In 1791 John Baker paid Tom Allen one cow for two months of work clearing land on his land in Winchester. Baker had purchased 350 acres a few years before from William and Edward Wilson for “$2.00 an acre and that in horses – valued.”70 Native American warriors could sour property transfers when they targeted livestock. John Constant had traded 700 acres of land to John Foster in exchange for a mare, only to have the “racing animal” stolen by Indians.71 If settlers could not retrieve the pilfered livestock themselves, their investments simply disappeared without any possibility of compensation. Warriors well understood the value of livestock to settlers and the suffering it caused when they damaged or destroyed those animals. When a band of warriors attacked Strode’s Station on March 1, 1781, they taunted settlers with a theatrical destruction of the settlers’ property. With the appearance of the Indian men, the settlers quickly sought refuge in the confines of the nearby Christopher Greenup to Judge Innes, May 24, 1790, and John Caldwell to Judge Innes, June 4, 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 89. 67 Judge Innes to the Secretary of War, July 7, 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1:88; Harry Innes to John Brown, December 7, 1787, Harry Innes Papers, The Martin F. Schmidt Research Library and Special Collections, Kentucky Historical Society (hereafter KHS), Frankfort, Kentucky; “An account of the depredations committed in the District of Kentucky, by the Indians, since the first of May, 1789,” Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 85. 68 Howard, Shawnee! 46, 322; James Taylor Carson, “Horses and the Economy and Culture of the Choctaw Indians, 1690–1840,” Ethnohistory, vol. 42 (Summer 1995), 495–513. 69 Lucien Beckner, ed., “Rev. John Dabney Shane’s Interview with Mrs. Sarah Graham of Bath County,” FCHQ, vol. 9 (Oct. 1935), 228. 70 Lucien Beckner, ed., “John D. Shane’s Interview with Benjamin Allen, Clark County,” FCHQ, vol. 5 (Apr. 1931), 66, 67. 71 Beckner, “Interview with Pioneer William Clinkenbeard,” 118. 66

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station, leaving their livestock exposed outside its walls. After successfully ­killing nearly every sheep, the warriors managed to drive all the cattle to an area just outside the range of the fortification’ guns but still within view of watching settlers. Warriors wrangled the herd, “not letting any escape that they could help,” and then began to slaughter the animals systematically, goading “the men in the Station to come and get their cattle.” Laughter echoed around the fort as the grisly ritual unfolded. When “they shot one that kicked up, or cut any capers,” one white observer recalled, “they would ha! ha! ha! as loud as to be heard all through the fort.”72 Settlers watched as food, cash, and cow painted the ground red with blood. Like livestock, slaves served multiple functions as labor, commodity, and cash. Virginians and other slave-owning settlers brought their chattel with them to Kentucky to clear land, plant crops, and defend settlements.73 The volume of slaves moving to the Ohio Valley correlated with demand for slave labor in the Spanish-controlled lower Mississippi valley, and by 1787 contributed to an increasingly lucrative interregional and international slave trade through the interior of North America.74 The value of slaves to Kentuckians was not lost on Native Americans. In 1792, several warriors from the “Wabash tribes” kidnapped a few slaves from Harry Innes. During the subsequent year, Innes attempted to use many of his most influential political connections to retrieve them, including Lieutenant Colonel James Wilkinson, superintendent of the Ohio Company Rufus Putnam, and Thomas Jefferson.75 What perplexed the new wave of western settlers was that local white residents also attacked their property. Some squatters and small farmers felt threatened by the new emigrants whose economy disrupted their hunting, interfered with their trade networks, and challenged their land claims.76 Disorderly surveying, fraudulent land sales, and a constellation of other litigious problems destabilized early land ownership in Kentucky. Speculators and land jobbers successfully used the courts to evict squatters, sometimes individuals with legitimate land claims. A dramatic restructuring of land ownership in the state followed, prompting violent responses.77 Even Native Americans Beckner, “Interview with Pioneer William Clinkenbeard,” 100–1; Lucien Beckner, ed., “A Sketch of the Early Adventures of William Sudduth in Kentucky,” FCHQ, vol. 2 (Jan. 1928), 47–8. 73 William Dodd Brown, ed., “A Visit to Boonesborough in 1779: The Recollections of Pioneer George M. Bedinger,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (hereafter RKHS), vol. 86 (Autumn 1988), 324n15. 74 Pen Bogart, “‘Sold for My Account’: The Early Slaver Trade between Kentucky and the Lower Mississippi Valley,” Ohio Valley History, vol. 2 (Spring 2002), 6. 75 James Wilkinson to Harry Innes, August 24 and October 18, 1792, Correspondence 1792; Thomas Jefferson to Harry Innes, May 23, 1793, Correspondence 1793, Harry Innes Papers, LOC. 76 Gregory H. Nobles, “Breaking into the Backcountry: New Approaches to the Early American Frontier, 1750–1800,” WMQ, vol. 46 (Oct. 1989), 655. 77 Aron, How the West Was Lost, 58–81. 72

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noted that they saw settlers “quarrelling every day about Land, & burning one anothers Houses.”78 Individuals and families who became frustrated with, or simply wanted to avoid, the tumultuous economic environment south of the Ohio River began settling in large numbers north of the river by the early 1780s. This pattern accelerated after Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which appeared to legitimate American possession of the region for both politicians and squatters. One military officer reported in 1785 that families were “moving to the unsettled [Ohio] country, by forties and fifties,” so much so that from Wheeling to the Scioto River “there is scarcely one Bottom on the river but has one or more families living thereon.”79 Beyond these settlements he counted many others of various sizes all the way to the Big Miami River and beyond. The actions of locals in the West became more relevant to Congress after it passed the Ordinance of 1784, which not only gave it management authority over the territory north of the Ohio but also offered an opportunity to relieve the national debt accrued during the Revolution. Martial actions of “disorderly and dispersed” western settlers destabilized the region and threatened to inhibit Congress’s ability to transform land into fiscal power. Only “the interposition of legal authority” could allow for “the speedy establishment of government and the regular administration of justice,” which would foster “immediate settlement and cultivation.”80 The several federal forts thereafter became instruments of the Confederation’s version of garrison government. That is, to borrow Stephen Saunders Webb’s definition, they initiated “militarized and centralized provincial administration.”81 As an arm of national authority, the military strove to define a frontier and bring order to the region by asserting its sovereignty over the inhabitants. In doing so the military became a bureaucratic vehicle for fiscal stability of the United States as well as management of Indian affairs. Locals seemed to care little for the presence of the army or its attempts to exercise authority. At Fort McIntosh in 1785, Ensign John Armstrong read instructions from the Confederation government forbidding settlement north of the Ohio River. His audience comprised emigrants who openly voiced their plans to homestead in federal territory, especially along the Hocking and Scioto River valleys. If Armstrong expected patriotic obeisance, he found Copy of a Speech sent from the Chiefs of the Delawares, Munsies & Mohikins [sic] by a Deputation of the several Nations living on the Ohio, To the Governor of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, 1771, folder 13, box 1, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 79 John Armstrong to Josiah Harmar, April 13, 1785, Harmar Papers, WLC. 80 Report of the Committee for Indian Affairs, October 15, 1783, Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (hereafter JCC), vol. 25, ed. Worthington C. Ford, et al. (Washington, DC, 1904–37), 683, 690. 81 Stephen Sunders Webb, “Army and Empire: English Garrison Government in Britain and America, 1569 to 1763,” WMQ, vol. 34 (Jan. 1977), 3. 78

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none. Instead listeners “laughed” and dismissed his warnings.82 White settlers ­defiantly ­relocated to restricted territory with a full understanding that they could not “claim Right or Title to Land till” they “obtain[ed] it in a constitutional manner.” Although some trespassers argued that they merely sought to escape what they perceived to be oppressive state authority in Kentucky, the underlying theme of their petitions spoke to a desire to obtain high-quality lands, which already was becoming difficult to the south. Squatters claimed that federal rule in Ohio would be “Sufficient to Rule us,” but the context for that statement was rooted in federal authority yet to be brought to bear. Of course, in the absence of satisfactory imperial or state control over settlers, Indian warriors worked feverishly to assert a body of rules to govern settlement patterns.83 To police illegal settlement, the military patrolled both sides of the river. On the southern bank, soldiers posted notices declaring settlement in Ohio illegal, a message they broadcast in villages and towns along the way. On the northern bank, soldiers followed a policy of forewarning trespassers: if they did not leave within a few weeks or months, they would be forcibly dispersed and their property destroyed. Despite some proponents who argued that illegal settlers should “have no more to expect, than to pull their crops, and carry it off the ground” without exception, local commanders exercised latitude to judge individual cases.84 Still, when faced with resistance, soldiers treated their opponents as an “Enemy” and were authorized to fire upon them if they did not abandon their settlements.85 Under such threats, some recent emigrants departed, at least temporarily, but most avoided doing so whenever possible. A few appealed to commanders at local forts to delay enforcement of removal while others sent remonstrances to Congress. Desperate settlers William Hougland and John Nixon, on behalf of several communities in the Ohio country, first petitioned regional commander Colonel Josiah Harmar not “to burn & destroy our dwellings,” and then unsuccessfully appealed to Congress when Harmar rebuffed their pleas.86 Others prepared for violent confrontation. During the first week in April 1785, Ensign John Armstrong and a body of soldiers from Fort McIntosh set to work John Armstrong to Josiah Harmar, April 13, 1785, Harmar Papers, WLC. Petition of the inhabitants on the Western Side of Ohio, August 30, 1785, Harmar Papers, WLC. 84 Richard Butler to Josiah Harmar, October 4, 1785, Harmar Papers, WLC. 85 John Armstrong to Josiah Harmar, April 12, 1785, Harmar Papers, WLC. 86 Copy of a petition from the inhabitants living on the west side of the Ohio River addressed to his honor the Commander of the Party, April 5, 1785; Eleven settlers to Captain Armstrong Commander of the Party, April 8, 1785; Settlers West of the Ohio to Josiah Harmar, April 15, 1785; Josiah Harmar to all those persons who have settled on the lands of the United States westward of the Ohio River contrary to the orders of Congress, April 21, 1785; Petition of the inhabitants on the Western Side of Ohio, August 30, 1785; Josiah Harmar to the Western Side of the Ohio, September 1, 1785, Harmar Papers, WLC. 82 83

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“dispossessing” settlers of their homes and property on the north side of the river. Between March 31 and April 4, they “dispossessed” eleven families and gave three families less than two weeks to leave. At Mingo Bottom (“or Old Town”), Armstrong instructed residents to disperse immediately. Most agreed to leave, especially the tenant farmers working for a man named Ross. Unlike his tenants, Ross refused to abandon his claim, boasting that he did not care that the orders came from Congress because “he was determined to hold his possession.” If the military “destroyed his House” he announced, “he would build six more in the course of a week.” Armstrong took Ross prisoner and sent him to Wheeling under guard while his troops razed buildings and crops and destroyed other property.87 The work went less smoothly outside “Norrisis [sic] Town (by the inhabitants so called),” when soldiers met a party of ­seventy to eighty men who assembled ready “to oppose” them. The men had prepared for the troops’ arrival “by cuting [sic] Loop holes” in the buildings and “­barricading the door.” The confrontation ended peacefully only after “threatening and persuasion” by Armstrong. In his report, Armstrong justified his decision to give the community another two weeks to evacuate “because of recent bad weather,” rather than characterize it as a negotiated outcome, which it likely was.88 Despite the energies of commanders like Armstrong, settlers continued to evade the military, to return to their former settlements, and to plant new communities. Indeed illicit settlement became easier in late 1787 when the federal government reduced the number of western forts  – under the “first principle of oeconomy” – as national revenues diminished. Plans for new federal forts in the West emerged quickly, but did little to curtail illegal emigration.89 During these years, new settlers added to an expanding economy grounded more on merchant capital and commercially oriented agriculture than the early settlers’ semi-subsistence trade economy. Some hunters and settlers in Kentucky rejected this transformation, at times violently, as did their counterparts in other frontier regions of the country by targeting the property of market-oriented producers in the area.90 In 1789, three “Hunters” near Wheeling began stealing horses from farmers.91 Politicians and military officers in Philadelphia as well as the West complained about lawless American “banditti” who threatened land claims and the general economy because of their self-serving interests.92 John Armstrong to Josiah Harmar, April 12, 1785, Harmar Papers, WLC. Ibid. 89 See for instance, Henry Knox to Josiah Harmar, April 25, 1788, Harmar Papers, WLC. 90 Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760–1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 114. 91 Andrew R. L. Cayton and Paula R. Riggs, City into Town: The City of Marietta, Ohio, 1788–1988 (Marietta: Marietta College Dawes Memorial Library, 1991), 61, 63. 92 Andrew R. L. Cayton, Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780–1825 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1986), 7–9. 87 88

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Although Kentucky banditti  – a term popularized by supporters of the Revolution to describe marauding bands of Loyalists – were the product of a war zone, their actions appear divorced from the larger war.93 Not only did they continue long after the Revolution, but observers characterized their behaviour as not dissimilar to that of Indians in the persisting western war, and went so far as to occasionally refer to these settlers as “our own white Indians.”94 So-called banditti likely comprised two distinct groups of ­people. One was the previously mentioned disaffected hunters who experienced diminished economic opportunities as land-based settlers populated the Ohio Valley. The other represented men who hoped to obtain land but struggled against speculators and other settlers who held overlapping land claims, a common trend during the early settlement of Kentucky. Embracing a “homestead ethic,” these individuals shared many commercial values with other agriculturalist settlers, but wanted to democratize access to land warrants from Virginia. Threats to homestead access therefore emanated from distant elite as well as local, marginalized poor. Stephen Aron, who has painted the most thorough portrait of this conflict, argues Kentucky was “ripe for rebellion in the 1780s” because of the breach between backcountry residents and absentee speculators.95 For many Kentuckians and white Ohio settlers whose social and economic status made them targets of such protests, little difference existed between Native Americans and settlers who acted “without Regard to public benefits.”96 Disputes over the economic transformation of the region did not result in rebellion for a couple reasons. First, during the Revolution, few Loyalists lived in the Ohio Valley and those with such sympathies did not broadcast their politics. Anglophilia became more distasteful after 1778 when western Indians began receiving British aid and encouragement to harass trans-­Appalachian settlements. Perhaps because of the exigencies of war, disgruntled settlers worked with the legislature of Virginia to resolve their problems rather than destabilize the nascent state authority in the region. Thus, the economic conflict did not boil over into a civil war as happened in North Carolina and Harry M. Ward, Between the Lines: Banditti of the American Revolution (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), x, xii. 94 Parsons to Johnson, November 26, 1785, William S. Johnson Papers, LOC, quoted in Cayton, Frontier Republic, 8. 95 Stephen Aron, How the West Was Lost, 79 (quote); David Andrew Nichols, Red Gentlemen and White Savages: Indians, Federalists, and the Search for Order on the American Frontier (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 61; Stephen Aron, “Pioneers and Profiteers: Land Speculation and the Homestead Ethic in Frontier Kentucky,” The Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 23 (May 1992), 179–98; Richard Maxwell Brown, “Back Country Rebellions and the Homestead Ethic in America, 1740–1799,” in Richard Maxwell Brown and Don E. Fehrenbacher, eds., Tradition, Conflict, and Modernization: Perspectives on the American Revolution (New York: Academic Press, 1977), 76–8, 84–5. 96 Parsons to Johnson, November 26, 1785, William S. Johnson Papers, LOC, quoted in Cayton, Frontier Republic, 8. 93

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other states.97 Second, Native Americans did not distinguish among ­competing groups of white settlers. When opportunities arose, raiding parties stole or destroyed property across status and productive capacity. This situation created a common cause for white settlers that functioned to mitigate their differences. Native American forays into newly settled territory led some farmers to divert valuable resources away from production and toward defense of their property. Across from the mouth of the Big Miami River in northern Kentucky, recent arrival John Tanner stood guard “with his gun in hand, to watch for Indians” rather than work alongside the others working his land, who were “dropping corn.”98 Farmers and other businessmen felt the costs of war, especially for labor. Dangers associated with frequent warrior incursions, as well as a depleted labor pool when men were called into militia service, caused labor prices to rise. Surveyor William Sudduth experienced these pressures in 1791 when “troublesome” Indians forced him “to pay double wages” for chainmen as he surveyed in Mason County.99 Warriors also elevated risks for emigrants and merchants. River traffic proved especially vulnerable and became a more popular target as the volume of emigrants and trade increased. Brigadier General Josiah Harmar ranted about “vagabond Indians” who occasionally “infested the [Ohio] river,” causing thousands of dollars in damage.100 John Tanner recalled that when his father purchased three flatboats to travel down the Ohio River during the late 1780s, “the sides of these boats had bullet holes in them, and there was blood on them, which I understood was that of people who had been killed by the Indians.”101 In 1791 Benjamin Allen of Clark County witnessed a keelboat on the Ohio River that “came down with every person in it dead.” It is likely that this boat was a part of what became known as Greathouse’s Defeat. When a party of men went out to bury the deceased, they found many “things the Indians had not been able to take with them or had no use for” scattered up tributary streams and in the woods “tore all to pieces.”102 Warriors rarely kept all of the material they found. Instead, not wanting to carry bulky items while Ward, Between the Lines. John Tanner, The Falcon: A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner during Thirty Years Residence among the Indians in the Interior of North America (New York: Penguin Books, 1994; rpt. 1830), 2–3, 13–14; Beckner, “Interview with Pioneer William Clinkenbeard,” 107; Bruce, “Memoirs of the Bruce Family,” William Bruce Memoirs, ISL. 99 Beckner, “Early Adventures of William Sudduth in Kentucky,” 57. 100 Wm. W. Dowell to the Hon. John Brown, April 4, 1790; Deposition of Charles Johnson, taken before the secretary of War, July 29, 1790; Brigadier General Harmar to the Secretary of War, June 9, 1790; Report of Buckner Thruston, Esq., March 24, 1790; James Wilkinson, Esq., to General Harmar, April 7, 1790; Secretary of War to General Harmar, June 7, 1790, Am. St. Pap. Ind. Af., 1: 86, 87, 91, 97. 101 Tanner, The Falcon, 2. 102 Beckner, “Interview with Benjamin Allen,” 89; Beckner, “Interview with Pioneer William Clinkenbeard,” 110–1. 97 98

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hunting or raiding, they often chose to destroy some of them rather than have them fall back in the hands of settlers. Charles Johnson recounted how a group of Shawnee persistently harassed a convoy of three boats traveling down the Ohio River. During the course of two days, a party of Shawnee warriors repeatedly attempted to overtake the boats. In an attempt to escape, all passengers – of which Charles Johnson was one – gathered in one boat and abandoned the others. The Shawnee took the two boats left behind along with “goods and other property” still in them. “[I]n my opinion,” wrote Johnson, the total value “must have amounted to several thousand pounds.”103 Travelers on the river passed at their own risk. Not only did the meager western military not have enough men to guard settlements, it lacked a set of armed vessels to command the main transportation artery in the region, the Ohio River. Residents and travelers expressed particular concern during the spring of 1790 because a group of as many as fifty Shawnee camped on the north side of the Ohio River near the mouth of  the Scioto and attacked passing vessels.104 This bold party struck at convoys of as many as five boats, causing “the destruction of much property, the loss of many lives, and the great annoyance of all intercourse from the northward.”105 Some attacks resulted in the loss of several thousand pounds worth of goods.106 James Wilkinson protested the lack of protection afforded to merchants and emigrants, suggesting that “if this party is not dislodged and dispersed, the navigation of the Ohio must cease.”107 In April, General Scott with a farrago of continental troops and local volunteers attempted to drive out the “­enterprising savages.” Scott’s party managed to kill four Shawnee as they marched up the riverside, but Knox called the mission a failure as boats continued to be harassed and ransacked.108 Northern tribes culled property from the region’s rivers with a discriminating eye. Warriors dealt with travelers differently, in part based on their national affiliation. The Shawnee and Miami specifically targeted American emigrants, merchants, and the military. Traders friendly to the British Empire did not suffer the same. During the summer of 1790, Joseph Maria Francesco Vigo navigated up the Wabash with another boat operated by an American trader named Melchor. A  Sardinian by birth, Vigo had established himself as a prominent fur trader during the 1780s working as a subagent for the Miami Company of Detroit.109 Deposition of Charles Johnson, taken before the Secretary of War, July 29, 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 87. 104 Wm W. Dowell to the Hon. John Brown, April 4, 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 86. 105 James Wilkinson, Esq. to General Harmar, April 7, 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 91. 106 Report of Buckner Thruston, Esq., March 24, 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 91. 107 James Wilkinson, Esq. to General Harmar, April 7, 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 91. 108 The Secretary of War to General Harmar, June 7, 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 97. 109 Francis Vigo in account Current with the Miami Company, 1787–1788, folder 4, box 2, Francis Vigo Papers, IHS. For a biography of Francis Vigo, see Dorothy Riker, “Francis Vigo,” Indiana Magazine of History, vol. 26 (Mar. 1930), 12–24. 103

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Because he lived and traded out of Post St. Vincennes, a small settlement and ­trading post founded by the French in 1732, Native American hunters who lived near the river knew him well. The two crews traveled separately, having met only incidentally as they entered the Wabash River. When both ships came under attack, Melchor managed to escape but the party boarded Vigo’s ship. Warriors searched and seized much of the crew’s personal items, but the party allowed Vigo to continue on his way to Vincennes with his cargo of peltry because he commanded a French vessel. Before releasing him, the warriors admonished Vigo for associating with Americans and explained that they would not have boarded the ship if it had been alone.110 Notwithstanding the warriors’ judicious tone, Vigo likely had begun to raise their ire. During the previous decade, the merchant slowly had been building a rapport with U.S. military commanders, supplying them with provisions and renting buildings to them.111 He had strong commercial ties with Kentucky merchants and by 1790 obtained a license from the United States to trade with Choctaw and Chickasaw communities.112 In many ways, Vigo was lucky to have gotten off so lightly. As long as Native Americans retained control over the Ohio country and its resources, they reserved the right to police the region, both to maintain their authority and to manage its economy. The assault on property led Kentuckians interested in promoting an economy built on commercial husbandry to seek aid from their newly declared sovereign governments. As early as October 1776, petitions from the residents in Kentucky District arrived at the Virginia legislature. Despite the recent Declaration of Independence, settlers framed their arguments in terms of local concerns, not national or revolutionary goals. They were, they claimed, “­incapable of protecting themselves” from “the incursions and depredations of the Indians.”113 The state, they claimed, had an obligation to use its authority to defend them. Kentuckians justifiably privileged their state government rather than Congress as a body of support. Through the late 1780s, Congress preferred to use its western garrisons to regulate settlers rather than raise an army to address the threat Native Americans posed to the new Ohio Valley settlements. Although the Confederation government both asserted that the United States possessed the right to soil in all Indian country ceded by Great Britain at the Treaty of Paris and worked to centralize its authority in Indian affairs, Governor of the Western Territory to the Secretary of War, 19 September 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 95–6. 111 Hyacinth [sic] Lasselle to William Henry Harrison, January 15 1840, Lasselle Papers, Lilly Library; United States account with Francis Vigo, June 1, 1788, v. 7 (Jan. 1–Jun. 30, 1788), Harmar Papers, WLC. 112 Account of Francis Vigo with Andrew Holmes, October 22, 1791 and October 24, 1791, folder 5, box 2, Francis Vigo Papers, IHS; Riker, “Francis Vigo,” 16. 113 Petition No. 4 “Request of Thomas Slaughter and other inhabitants of Kentucky for a method of defense,” in James Rood Robertson, Petitions of the Early Inhabitants of Kentucky to the General Assembly of Virginia, 1769–1792 (Louisville: John P. Morton and Company, 1914), 41–2. 110

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its inability to raise revenue to enforce its authority – over the various states or Indians  – hampered these goals.114 The number of nationalists  – individuals arguing for greater centralized power in the national government  – in Congress increased during the 1780s and they lobbied vigorously for expanded bureaucratic management of foreign affairs and the military, as well as fiscal reform, but their influence remained limited within the political structure of the Confederation Congress.115 Instead, intense localism and a notion that the United States was a loose confederation rather than a national union provided the philosophical bulwark for most legislation.116 Without clear direction and support from congressional leaders, defense of western communities fell under state-directed mechanisms outlined in the Articles of Confederation: local militias and “volunteer expeditions” that operated, in the words of Harry Innes, for “revenge, protection, and self-preservation.”117 Regulatory power of the borderland therefore fell to local communities. Even Virginia’s assembly had difficulty managing the militia in the western district. With localized concerns dictating relations with Indian country, Congress often found its agenda to pursue peace undermined and its leverage with Indian leaders diminished. Despite its reluctance to engage in outright war, the military at times unofficially helped settlers through inaction. Brigadier General Wilkinson did not try to stop a party of 180 mounted volunteers from Kentucky when they left to attack Indian settlements in the spring of 1792 despite General Anthony Wayne’s clear orders to maintain “pacific overtures” toward Native Americans. Wilkinson relayed these orders to county lieutenants but made no effort to prevent the incursion.118 Vigilante parties organized and supplied themselves before marching north to Native American villages, where they razed homes and fields as retribution for the destruction of settler property.119 Notables like George Rogers Clark, as well as more obscure commanders appointed by Virginia, led earlier campaigns for the same purpose. These expeditions were funded by the state and often poorly supplied. What provisions those parties carried from Kentucky came largely from the region’s agricultural surpluses.120 Reginald Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783–1812 (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967), 12–14. 115 Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation, 1781–1789 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), 54–84; E. Wayne Carp, To Starve the Army at Pleasure: Continental Army Administration and American Political Culture, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 199–200. 116 David C. Hendrickson, “The First Union: Nationalism versus Internationalism in the American Revolution,” in Eliga H. Gould and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 35–53. 117 Judge Innes to the Secretary of War, July 7, 1790, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 88 (original emphasis). 118 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, June 15, 1792, in Richard C. Knopf, ed., Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1960), 19. 119 Robert B. McAfee, “The Life and Times of Robert B. McAfee and His Family and Connections,” RKHS, vol. 33 (Jan. 1927), 31–3. 120 Randolph C. Downes, “Trade in Frontier Ohio,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 16 (Mar. 1930), 472. 114

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Through the 1770s, the trans-Appalachian conflict rarely had much to do with the war for political autonomy. Indeed continued settlement in the West likely bled manpower resources that might have been better served in the East. Until 1783, western commanders, not western settlers, justified their actions within the context of the Revolution, especially when writing to Virginia officials like Thomas Jefferson. Only in 1779 did British forces engage American ­counterparts, though such a description might exaggerate the encounter. During the summer of 1778 Canadian Lieutenant-Governor Henry Hamilton received orders to invade the Ohio country to preserve the Indian trade in response to George Rogers Clark’s successful expedition against Kaskaskia. Hamilton’s forces took control of Vincennes late in the year, prompting Clark’s ragtag militia compatriots to confront the British presence. In February 1779, Clark’s force easily routed the ill-prepared Hamilton, who faced dissention among his ranks. Prior to the skirmish, his locally-based supporting French militia refused to fight based on recently received news of a Franco-American ­alliance.121 Despite Hamilton’s failed expedition, scholars largely accept that Clark operated for private rather than public interests. He had invaded Kaskaskia to establish land claims or corporate access to the fur trade rather than advance the political goals of the Revolution.122 In this sense Clark’s actions, as would his later expeditions, reflected the interests of western settlers and were typical of regional expeditions, which sought to engage Native Americans and not forces under the British ensign. Even as an exception, this encounter proves the rule: the western war was regional in nature during the 1770s and 1780s even within the context of the Revolution. After 1783, without the war to legitimize their actions, militia commanders cited revenge and self-defense as rationales for violence they perpetrated, but their motives and methods remained the same. Vigilante parties organized themselves and marched north to Native American villages where they razed homes and fields in retribution for Indian raids on American property. Unlike American emigrants and merchants, Native Americans typically did not possess equivalent material property, such as horse-drawn plows, preventing these expeditions from inflicting equivalent material damage on village residents. Also, villagers abandoned their homes and fields shortly before American ­raiding parties arrived. Nevertheless, such American forays undermined the livelihood of Native American villages by destroying their ability to trade and subsist and forced villages into a temporary dependence on neighboring communities or British garrisons. John D. Barnhart, ed., Henry Hamilton and George Rogers Clark in the American Revolution with the Unpublished Journal of Lieut. Gov. Henry Hamilton (Crawfordsville, IN: R. E. Banta, 1951), 68–9, 75. 122 Jack M. Sosin, The Revolutionary Frontier, 1763–1783 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), 117; George C. Chalou, “George Rogers Clark and Indian America, 1778–1780,” in The French, the Indians, and George Rogers Clark in the Illinois Country: Proceedings of an Indiana American Revolution Bicentennial Symposium (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1977), 38. 121

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If Indians had their way of war, then settler incursion into Indian country, like those described here, represented an American way of war. John Grenier convincingly demonstrates that by the end of the eighteenth century, Americans “created a military tradition that accepted, legitimized, and encouraged attacks upon and the destruction of noncombatants, villages, and agricultural resources.”123 Much like their Native American counterparts, militia choices to deploy this destruction resulted from pragmatic decisions about what they could accomplish in the conflict. For instance, it was far easier  – given the tendency of Native Americans to abandon their physical communities when attacked – to assault the villages and crops than pursue warriors. As well, it reflected a set of choices to elevate the destructive nature of the conflict to impart retribution and fear, which they hoped would reduce future destruction of white Ohio Valleyan property by warriors. But it also sought to disrupt the Indian economy and thereby delay potential future attacks, to secure time and space for a successful agricultural cycle among the settlers.124 In this way, this style of warfare served a broad economic agenda designed to destabilize the Indian economy while simultaneously providing some protection for American settlements. Such “feed fights” have a long history that traces back to early colonial settlement. Yet as much as racism was expressed through this strategy, pragmatic economic agendas associated with protecting the settlers’ economic infrastructure served as its germ.125 Certainly not all “feed fights” constituted an economically rooted property war, but during the Revolution these tactics were often paired with overt or ancillary agendas to transform the use of land, just as in the Ohio Valley.126 What makes the Ohio Valley distinct from other theaters during the Revolution was its conceptual and geographic distance from the formal war with Britain. Without a civil war pitting revolutionaries against loyalists, or a clash between British and Continental armies in the region, the western war remained locked in local issues. The central issue was the conflict over how land would be used and who would control that choice. Wayne E. Lee argues that militias “became the military instrument of revenge” during the Revolution. Nowhere was this truer than where violence was directed against Indian communities because militias did not apply limitations to violence as they did against white adversaries.127 John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 10. 124 Lee, “From Gentility to Atrocity,” 6, 11, 13; David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 767–8. 125 J. Fredrick Fausz, “Patterns of Anglo-Indian Aggression and Accommodation along the midAtlantic Coast, 1584–1634,” in William W. Fitzhugh, ed., Cultures in Contact: The Impact of European Contacts on Native American Cultural Institutions, A.D. 1000–1800 (Washington, DC: 1985), 246. 126 Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 124–6, 197–205. 127 Wayne E. Lee, Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina: The Culture of Violence in Riot and War (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 121–3, 129. 123

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At times settler interpretations of Indian warfare as acutely vicious contributed to an escalation of violence. But through the 1780s there does not appear to be a continuous ratcheting up of animosity. While the massacre of Delaware Indians at Gnaddenhutten by vengeful whites was horrific, it represented an extreme variant of, not a departure from, the regular ­violence perpetrated by warriors and militia members on noncombatants through the first half of the 1790s. Loss of property and disruption of the region’s economies likewise had become standard fare. Militias could exercise extreme destruction on Indian towns in large measure because that was as easy for them as for warriors who destroyed settler property. But this violence did not exist in a void. Because of the decentralized control of the institution, western militia acted on parochial interests far more than scholars have described for eastern militia.128 Statist and national-statist agendas for the war meant far less to western militia than the provincial goals of their communities. The growing population of agriculturalist settlers wanted its militia to be an instrument of vengeance, but not so much so that their actions would sacrifice the security of the community. When violence did escalate during the 1790s, it happened because of the insertion of resources by the national state rather than any particular designs of settlers or their Indian counterparts. In the short term and at the local level, this quid pro quo style of property war favored Native Americans. A modest merchant or emigrant farmer might spend years working to replace property destroyed by a party of warriors. When American settlers razed a Native American village, displaced residents returned the subsequent spring, rebuilt homes, and replanted their fields. In the long term and from a regional perspective, Native American warriors could not inflict sufficient property damage to a broad enough spectrum of the settler population to significantly retard regional economic growth. Moreover, Indian families closest to the Ohio River repeatedly found their villages destroyed, encumbering their agricultural capacity and bogging down their participation in the fur trade. If by 1790 the larger confrontation between Ohio Valley settlers and the northern tribes had become a contest of attrition, then the latter found themselves on the losing end of it. By that year, the District of Kentucky had transformed into one of the fastest growing areas in the country, far removed from the scattered outpost it had been only a decade earlier. Speculators jockeyed for position to make the best profit as the Bluegrass Region became a ­land-market paradise. Farmers firmly planted themselves along the Salt, Kentucky, and Green rivers. The best hopes of Native American leaders like Killbuck and Captain Johnny, who had envisioned continuing Indian control of Kentucky, passed into fancy. 128

John Shy reminds scholars to consider the “social, political, economic, and even intellectual context” of the military they study. John Shy, “A New Look at the Colonial Militia,” A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 32–3.

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For many settlers, proliferating American settlements added potential for improved militia security, but such forces often failed to serve the entire community, especially as manufacturing increased and wealthy settlers consolidated their influence on community resources. Rural residents and smaller towns frequently complained that the militia did not afford them protection. Nor did they feel safe when on the road to market or courthouse to conduct business. Politicians and merchants in the county seats and larger towns used their sway to rebuff complaints and to shield their privileged use of militia protections.129 Appealing to the Virginia legislature, influential westerners convinced state politicians to fund militias for the protection of private industry, such as saltworks and ironworks, over residential communities. As early as 1777 militias protected salt making near Boonesborough at Blue Licks and, later, at other sites like the Goose Creek Saltworks.130 After the Slate Creek Iron Works was established in Clark County in 1789, state legislation directed militias to provide security for that manufacturing center.131 The decision to send militia units to these facilities was not a knee-jerk reaction by concerned owners, or distant legislators, but rather an acknowledgment of the value of those sites in the eyes of Native Americans, as well as interested local merchants, manufacturers, and politicians.132 As bands of warriors targeted the ironworks during the first half of the 1790s, Kentuckians spent more money protecting that one facility than any entire county in the state. For the period from statehood through 1795, Kentuckians dispersed more than £1,000 solely to protect the Slate Creek Iron Works, an amount that comprised slightly less than forty percent of the expenditures for all militias in the state. The next highest allocation of funds went to Lincoln County, which received fourteen percent.133 As the burden of the war wore on settlers and the state government, more western voices began to call for federal intervention in the conflict. Kentuckians Petition No. 48 “Request of the inhabitants of Limestone Settlement and other parts of Bourbon County for a division of Bourbon County”; Petition No. 52 “Request of the inhabitants of Fayette County for a division of the county”; Petition No. 54 “Request of the inhabitants of the Limestone Settlement of Bourbon County for a division of the county”; Petition No. 66 “Protest of sundry inhabitants of Bourbon County against a division of the county,” in Robertson, Petitions, 108–10, 114–16, 117–19, 131–2. 130 William Dodd Brown, “The Capture of Daniel Boone’s Saltmakers: Fresh Perspectives from Primary Sources,” RKHS, vol. 68 (Jan. 1994), 1–18. 131 Beckner, “Early Adventures of William Sudduth in Kentucky,” 56, 59. 132 John Breckinridge to Isaac Shelby, March 6, 1795, Correspondence 1795, box 1, Isaac Shelby Papers, FHS. 133 These figures are for the period beginning with statehood and expenses tabulated include pay for both service and rations. The ranking (and proportion) of militia expenditures were Slate Creek Iron Works (38.8%), Lincoln County (14.0%), Mercer County (4.7%), Washington County (4.2%), Hardin County (2.9%), and Madison County (1.9%). Data compiled from “State Archives General Expenditures of Government, 1792–1798” RKHS, vol. 30 (Apr. 1932), 162–72; (Jul. 1932), 221–36; (Oct. 1932), 297–321; RKHS, vol. 31 (Jan. 1933), 52–69; (Apr. 1933), 101–9; (Jul. 1933), 201–15; (Oct. 1933), 328–40; RKHS, vol. 32 (Jan. 1934), 50–64; (Apr. 1934), 125–38. 129

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were not alone. A rising nationalist sentiment infected American society broadly, if unevenly, by the middle of the 1780s. Scholars have identified numerous causes for the ascension of nationalism or national-statism over the internationalism or confederationism associated with the earlier revolutionary period. E. Wayne Carp finds the germ of departure in the cauldron of the late Revolutionary War as supply problems and military failures prompted citizens to endorse stronger congressional powers.134 This factor likely had almost no influence in Kentucky, which saw little support from Congress. Charles Beard locates the shift in the efforts of wealthy creditors to preserve their private interests during the financial crisis gripping the states and union during the 1780s. Woody Holton turns that thesis on its head, demonstrating a growing popular will among farmers and others to preserve their ability both to borrow and repay their debts in the face of harsh state legislative policies.135 Although Kentuckians worried about their personal financial stability and clarifying land claims became a litigious nightmare in the state, few wrote their private concerns so large. Instead, western nationalism grew out of the property war with the Indians. Still it is important to remember that forces driving the ascension of nationalism were felt unevenly across the region and country. As John L. Brooke reminds scholars, endorsements of nationalism spawned from intensely local concerns.136 This sea shift did not come easily in the Ohio Valley and the actions of federal troops did not help matters. Not only had Congress implemented a system of garrison government whose purpose had served to police whites rather than protect them from Indians, Congress also appeared far more concerned with the welfare of Indians than settlers.137 After removing squatters from north of the Ohio, Congress instructed commanders to invite Indians to live near the forts, where they would receive protection and material support.138 Indians Carp, To Starve the Army at Pleasure, 196. A more concise rendition of this argument can be found in Carp, “The Origins of the Nationalist Movement of 1780–1783: Congressional Administration and the Continental Army,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 107 (July 1983), 363–92. 135 John McCusker and Russell Menard argue that “something ‘truly disasterous’ happened to the American economy between 1775 and 1790” though various regions of the country experienced that decline differently. John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 373, 375. Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan Company, 1913); Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007). 136 John L. Brooke, “To the Quiet of the People: Revolutionary Settlements and Civil Unrest in Western Massachusetts, 1774–1789,” WMQ, vol. 46 (July 1989), 425–62; John L. Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713–1861 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Mary M. Schweitzer, “The Ratification Paradox in the Great Valley of the Appalachians,” in Gould and Onuf, Empire and Nation, 115–35. 137 John Armstrong, report to Colonel Josiah Harmar, April 12, 1785, vol. 2, Harmar Papers, WLC. 138 Resolution of Congress, August 24, 1785, JCC, 31: 562–3. 134

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so encouraged were mostly Delaware Indians associated with Moravian ­missionaries, few, if any, of whom had engaged in raiding exercises in Kentucky. But this mattered little to white settlers whose racism had grown more acute during the previous decade. George Nicholas captured a broad western sentiment with his view that the “continental troops so far from affording the district any aid appear to consider its inhabitants as enemies.”139 As much as the federal military presence ruffled feathers among Kentuckians, so too did the state assembly in Richmond. By 1785 taxes on large land ­purchases raised the ire of speculators, who characterized the legislation as onerous. Broader discontent surfaced the same year when Virginian officials ordered that militias could no longer independently organize expeditions against Indians, rather they needed state authorization. When paired with other, more minor complaints, many Kentuckians saw reason to join the statehood movement, which began in earnest.140 More than any other issue, protection of person and property shaped the will of western settlers. With a failure of leadership in the state capital to provide security, Kentuckians and others in the Ohio Valley turned their gaze to the other government institution which held potential to offer protection: Congress. Even Harry Innes, who might be dubbed a proto-anti-Federalist, began to believe that in addition to the state government, the national state had a responsibility to protect not only its citizenry but also its property.141 From Danville in 1787 he argued that “our defenseless State ought to be pressed upon Congress” so that Kentucky could receive “that protection which as a part of the Federal Union we are entitled to.”142 Rufus Putnam of Marietta, Ohio, a beneficiary of nationalist patrons, likewise contended that the national government needed to take a greater role in securing the western economy.143 Nationally, the ascension of a popular belief that there needed to be a stronger national government culminated in the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. But even under the aegis of the Articles of Confederation, Congress evidenced this trend. In July 1787 its members passed “the Ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States North West of the River Ohio.” By establishing criteria for a territorial government and protocols for integrating territories into the union of states, Congress demonstrated a commitment to settle the land and thereby signaled a more assertive and aggressive George Nicholas to John Brown, November 12, 1789, Harry Innes Papers, KHS. Thomas Perkins Abernethy, Western Lands and the American Revolution (New York: Russell & Russell, 1959), 303. 141 Nichols, Red Gentlemen and White Savages, 93–94; David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 86; Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 413–4. 142 Innes to Brown, December 7, 1787, Harry Innes Collection, KHS. 143 Rufus Putnam, Esq., to the President of the United States, January 8, 1791, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1:122. 139 140

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policy toward Indians.144 The treaties dictated to Indian delegations on behalf of Congress at forts Stanwix (1784) and McIntosh (1785), and at the mouth of the Great Miami River (1786), while forceful in their language of sovereignty, had been anemic for want of martial or fiscal commitment to enforce them.145 With the ordinance, the federal government proclaimed it would engender a decisive connection to a region that lacked institutional linkages to the rest of the country.146 Yet even as political momentum in Congress gravitated toward greater centralized authority, a convention of men from various states met in Philadelphia with hopes to transform government. Their purpose, as authorized by Congress, was to “revis[e] the Articles of Confederation” to “render the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government.”147 The men who orchestrated this meeting, as Richard Beeman has recently written, “had something more ambitious in mind than a mere tinkering with the Articles of Confederation.”148 The result of their debates was, of course, the Constitution, which differed substantially from the Articles of Confederation in many ways, but perhaps none more important, as Max Edling highlights, than the fiscal and military authority granted by it.149 These powers held remarkable consequences for the trans-Appalachian West. Among his many dissertations in support of the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton argued that a federal army would be far more effective than militia in defending the western frontier from the “ravages and depredations of the Indians” while also freeing militia from burdensome service.150 Moreover, he cast the “security” of western settlers as a national issue affecting the security of all states.151 Despite his rhetoric, the District of Kentucky remained fervently anti-Federalist throughout the ratification debates even as residents there increasingly viewed the national state as holding a responsibility to secure the West. With ratification and the formation of government in 1789, western settlers looked to the newly organized constitutional government in Philadelphia and Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500–2000 (New York: Viking, 2005), 191; Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 37. 145 David Nichols offers an insightful examination of these treaties and others. Nichols, Red Gentlemen and White Savages, 27–36, 38–44, 100–6; Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 19–24. 146 An Ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States North West of the river Ohio, July 13, 1787, JCC, 32: 334–43; Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 7. 147 Congressional resolution, February 21, 1787, JCC, 32: 74. 148 Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (New York: Random House, 2009), 19. 149 Max M. Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 150 Federalist no. 24, The Federalist Papers, Clinton Rossiter, ed. (New York: Penguin, 1961), 161. 151 Federalist no. 25, The Federalist Papers, 163–4. 144

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less to their state assemblies for assistance in their war against the Ohio ­country Indians.152 Although Hamilton had forecast the militarization of the borderland during the ratification debates, repeated stories given by western settlers who prophesied the destruction of a burgeoning western economy became a proximate rationale for Congress, President Washington, and his cabinet to move beyond diplomatic efforts to secure peace. Although it took until the end of the first session of the first Congress, legislators authorized the president to call the militia into service “as he may judge necessary” to protect “the inhabitants of the frontiers of the United States from hostile incursions of the Indians” in September 1789.153 Although states continued to call militias into service, the federal government only reimbursed expenses associated with the ­militia mustered by order of the president. To create parity between the nation’s troops and the militia, Congress equalized pay and subsistence when in service, but militias were to be “armed and accoutred at their own expence.”154 George Washington, eager to demonstrate federal sovereignty and military strength in the West where he held land interests, used this power frequently. Within two years, his administration authorized militia service, resulting in costs of $4,177.45 to protect western Pennsylvania, $8,917.85 for defending western Virginia, and $3,876.27 for guarding the territory northwest of the Ohio River. During the summer of 1791, James McHenry offered a “conjectural estimate of the expence of the Militia” called into service by the president to be $37,339, far outstripping state expenditures.155 With these changes, the fiscal burden of the property war moved from local communities and Virginia to the shoulders of the federal government. A new financial responsibility paralleled changes in military approach to the West. Military commanders in the Ohio Valley saw their objectives revised from a defensive or policing mode to a demonstration of federal power in the region. Because Congress could not fund a war against Indians during the 1780s, it ordered federal agents superintending Indian affairs to pursue avenues of peace and trade rather than antagonize those communities further.156 Under the Washington administration this policy ended. Building on new

No. 5: Secretary of War to Governor St. Clair or Brigadier General Harmar, March 3, 1790, James McHenry Letterbook, 1789–1791, folder 31, box 1, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 153 Act of September 19, 1789, ch. 25, United States Statutes at Large, 1789–1873 (here after Stat.), vol. 1:96. Subsequent congresses passed similar legislation. Act of April 30, 1790, ch. 10, 1 Stat., 116. 154 Act of September 19, 1789, ch. 25, 1 Stat., 96; Act of April 30, 1790, ch. 10, 1 Stat., 116; James McHenry Letterbook, 1789–1791, No. 2: Extract of a letter from the Secretary of War to his Excellency the governor of Virginia and the same to the President of Pennsylvania, October 5, 1789, folder 31, box 1, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 155 James McHenry Letterbook, 1789–1791, No. 1: Estimate of the expenses which have been incurred for the defensive protection of the frontiers against the Indians during the Years 1790 & 1791, folder 31, box 1, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 156 Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 35. 152

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authorities granted in the Constitution, as well as by orders of Congress and the ­president, Secretary of War Henry Knox hoped to use a military strike upon the Miami villages at the headwaters of the Wabash River “to punish” Shawnee and Miami communities for their incursions into the Ohio Valley.157 Knox and others expected to deter Native American leaders and their ­constituents from believing that they could defeat an organized military assault by the United States, despite some historic success opposing militias. This policy was a clear departure from the one deployed by the Continental Congress during the 1780s, which had utilized garrison government to police white settlers. Now the Washington administration committed to turning the gaze of military posts along the Ohio Valley from the south to the north, and in so doing further appropriated the war from local militia. What Americans called the Miami Villages (present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana) was a collection of six distinct towns with a population of approximately two thousand Indians. Miami Town, or Kekionga, served as an economic center of the fur trade as well as a political center. Although the settlement was predominately Miami, by 1790 it had become a refuge to Shawnee and Delaware families looking to escape militia raids.158 Although large numbers of Native Americans in the Ohio country lived in homogenous communities, they also shared a tradition of composite communities. Since the middle of the eighteenth century, Indians in the Ohio country had periodically formed polyglot towns or collections of villages with members of several nations living in proximity to one another. These living arrangements had been a response to economic, demographic, and political forces transforming western Pennsylvania and the Ohio country in the years surrounding the Seven Years War.159 These conditions prompted leaders like Delaware prophet Neolin and Ottawa chief Pontiac to advocate pan-ethnic unity and articulate a racialized Indian identity that distinguished a “red” race from “white” and “black” counterparts.160 After Pontiac’s War, many composite communities disbanded. But by the 1790s, they had become common again as settler invasions sent ripples through Indian country.161 Kekionga represented the largest such village in the Ohio country. There, Miami families under influential chiefs such as Pacanne, Le Gris, and Little Turtle, and an emergent Shawnee set of leaders including Blue Jacket, transformed Kekionga into an economic and political center of the region, especially The Secretary of War to Governor St. Clair, September 12, 1790, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 100. John Sugden, Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 79–80, 93. 159 White, Middle Ground, 147. 160 Dowd uses “pan-Indian,” but “pan-ethnic” better articulates not only diversity but also potential obstacles associated with creating a degree of unity. Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 30, 33–6. 161 Nichols uses the term federationalism to describe Indian cooperative beliefs and activities in the Ohio Valley during the 1780s and 1790s. Nichols, Red Gentlemen and White Savages, 14–15. 157 158

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following the weak Treaty of Fort Harmar in January 1789.162 The ascendancy of this community made it a strategic target in the minds of many Americans. Confident of a sweeping victory, Congress appointed Josiah Harmar brigadier general of the western forces. On September 30, 1790, he and his men marched out of Fort Washington (near Cincinnati), beginning their 170-mile trek to the Miami Villages on the Wabash.163 Although 1,453 troops marched under Harmar, only 320 regular troops filled his ranks, numbers suggesting that a shift in federal policy did not necessarily mean a change in who would fight the war; local militias continued to participate even as federal officers issued the orders. Militia participation often came reluctantly and with a degree of skepticism toward federal commitment and aptitude, and frequently was contingent upon local interests rather than federal goals despite a veneer of similitude between them.164 Once at the Wabash, the army managed to kill just over 100 warriors who tried to hold off the troops while their neighbors fled. When Harmar entered the villages, he ordered his men to destroy about 300 wigwams and log houses, leveling the settlement. In the surrounding fields, Harmar estimated the Shawnee and Miami had about twenty thousand bushels of corn as well as other vegetables not yet harvested, which he seized and placed under the control of his quartermaster general for redistribution to the soldiers. Soldiers plundered kettles and other valuable items, booty they viewed as supplemental to their military pay. Such “unsoldier-like behavior” irked Harmar, who struggled to discipline his men and redistribute the property fairly. What the army did not consume Harmar ordered burned and destroyed – a pattern he repeated at other Shawnee villages.165 The ease with which the soldiers destroyed the villages belied the danger of their situation. Approximately 600 warriors skirmished with Harmar’s army and exposed his weak supply network.166 Harmar rapidly discovered his army’s provisions stretched beyond their capacity, prompting a retreat to the safety and resources of the Ohio Valley. Along the way, Shawnee and Miami warriors including Blue Jacket and Little Turtle successfully ambushed the troops, sending Harmar’s men into disarray while killing 183 men and wounding 31

Sugden, Blue Jacket, 93–4; White, Middle Ground, 447. Brigadier General Harmar to the Secretary of War, November 4, 1790, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 104. 164 Paul David Nelson, “General Charles Scott, the Kentucky Mounted Volunteers, and the Northwest Indian Wars, 1784–1794,” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 6, (Autumn 1986), 223–4, 229. 165 Harmar earlier estimated it was “at least 10,000 bushels with potatoes, vegetables &c &c in abundance,” but later revised this claim. Josiah Harmar to Arthur St. Clair, October 18, 1790, folder 32, box 1, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS; Brigadier General Harmar to the Secretary of War, November 4, 1790, and General Orders, October 17, 18, and 20, 1790, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 104, 105. 166 Wiley Sword, President Washington’s Indian War: The Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1790– 1795 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 96, 103. 162 163

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others.167 These were heavy losses considering the limited scope of the effort. Despite Harmar’s success in destroying the villages, the high number of casualties led members of Congress and the Washington administration to view the mission as a failure.168 Back at the Miami Villages, towns and fields smoldered. Earlier when ­soldiers approached, women and children hastily retreated to the countryside. Warriors also left, but they patrolled the outskirts of villages and attacked soldiers when exposed, avoiding any direct engagement with the army. This strategy had been effective in the past when militias and “volunteer expeditions” marauded in their territory. Again they sacrificed their physical communities to reduce their own casualties, but remained strong enough to inflict heavy blows on the overextended and isolated bands of soldiers.169 After the attack, the dispossessed villagers relocated to neighboring communities, as well as to British forts and traders, where they found support during the winter months. The following spring, they rebuilt their villages, sowing fields anew.170 Harmar’s focus on razing towns and fields surprised few observers. During the Revolution, commanders of the Continental Army grew frustrated with their inability to engage warrior foes and occasionally used the feed fight against Indian enemies.171 Yet that Harmar’s campaign was similar to previous militia expeditions is noteworthy. Except for larger numbers of men and the deployment of a modest corps of regular soldiers, this campaign had all the earmarks of a militia endeavor: it was a campaign of retribution that did not anticipate a pitch battle; the purpose was to destroy the property of Indians and disrupt their economy during the harvest; the troops were poorly supplied and vulnerable to attack; despite the attending destruction of Indian fields, the campaign accomplished little tactically. If the campaign achieved anything for the settler communities, it served to give them an opportunity to harvest their crops unmolested. By most measures, Harmar’s campaign was a militia expedition writ large.172 Still, federal command was a substantial departure, one that represented a major investment in appropriating the property war from provincial authorities. By the winter of 1791, the consequences of Harmar’s expedition became manifest. Previously reluctant Shawnee and Miami bands became more militant in the wake of the attack. Some Ojibwas, Ottawas, Delawares, Potawatomis, Return of the killed and wounded upon the expedition against the Miami towns, under the command of Brigadier General Harmar, November 4, 1790, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 106; Sudgen, Blue Jacket, 101–5; Harvey Lewis Carter, Life and Times of Little Turtle: First Sagamore of the Wabash (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 93. 168 Captain David Zeigler to Governor St. Clair, January 8, 1791, and Rufus Putnam, Esq., to the Secretary of War, January 8, 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1:122. 169 Starkey, European and Native American Warfare, 18. 170 Report of Brigadier General Scott, June 28, 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 122. 171 Joseph R. Fischer, A Well-Regulated Failure: The Sullivan Campaign against the Iroquois, JulySeptember 1779 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), 82, 86. 172 This interpretation of Harmar’s campaign differs from the one presented by Grenier. Grenier, The First Way of War, 196. 167

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and Wyandots joined their Wabash counterparts as news of Harmar’s advance crossed the region. Their partnership fostered efforts to form a confederacy to repel American forces.173 A master of diplomacy, Blue Jacket used the successful Indian repulsion of American troops to strengthen political and military ties with Britain and to encourage more Canadian traders to enter the region. “Send your trading men. . . amongst us,” he announced. “‘Tis the interest of ye and us,” he not so subtly augured, to “Protect the barter between the white and red people and forsake not the trade that links us together in amity and interest.”174 Inspired by their success, warrior raids upon settler communities arrived “much sooner” during 1791 than Americans expected.175 Although violence associated with the war could occur anytime during the year, Native American martial actions tended to occur in tandem with rhythms of the agricultural cycle. During the late autumn and winter months, American settlements saw fewer attacks because most of the region’s Indian population traveled to winter hunting grounds, leaving fewer men to engage in guerrilla warfare. Also a barren and snow-covered landscape made travel more difficult and raiding less efficient. As spring arrived and these communities returned to their sugar camps and towns, Indian men again dedicated more of their labor to hunting and warfare. By March or April, western settlers and river travelers anticipated increased attacks as Native American men combined hunting expeditions with military raids.176 For many Americans living along the river valley and deeper in Kentucky, more brazen incursions by bands of Native Americans “clearly prove[d] that the expedition against the Shawanese w[ould] not produce peace, but, on the contrary, a more general and outrageous war.”177 Far from ending the conflict, federal involvement appeared to heighten its intensity. In Ohio, war parties targeted densely populated areas such as Marietta, a village of as many as eighty houses concentrated along a one-mile stretch of river. In January 1791, Rufus Putnam wrote to George Washington, impressing upon him the need to send troops for protection. Native Americans destroyed corn, forage, and cattle along more than forty miles of the Ohio River. Local militias patrolled, but at a toll to the productive capacity of area communities. Mustered men, of course, could not sow. With a dire long view, Putnam eulogized hired men toiling in fields to raise the funds to establish their own ­homesteads only to be drawn away for time-consuming and potentially Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 106; Sugden, Blue Jacket, 108; Captain David Zeigler to Governor St. Clair, 8 January 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 122. 174 Quoted in Sugden, Blue Jacket, 107. 175 Rufus Putnam, Esq. to the President of the United States, January 8, 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 122. 176 Henry Knox to Governor St. Clair, or Brigadier General Harmar, March 3, 1790, and Henry Knox to Harry Innes, Esq. District Judge of Kentucky, April 13, 1790, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 101. 177 Rufus Putnam, Esq. to the Secretary of War, January 8, 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 122. 173

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dangerous militia service. Putnam warned that repeated attacks and forced ­militia service would incite many young men to quit the region entirely, the result of which would be a dilapidated economy. If that happened, he lamented, those lucky enough “not [to] fall a prey to the savages” would be “a ruined people.”178 In March 1791, Congress authorized another federally funded assault against the northern tribes.179 To lead the expedition, Washington appointed the territorial governor of the Northwest Territory, Arthur St. Clair. Despite Harmar’s raid and promises of another, many Kentuckians remained skeptical of federal commitment. Delays dragged on as St. Clair slowly organized his men and supplies during the summer, leading militia under Kentuckyappointed Brigadier General Charles Scott to grow restless. Scott, one member of a committee appointed by Washington to integrate Kentucky militia into federal service, pressured St. Clair to authorize an assault into Indian country contrary to extant orders. St. Clair agreed, hoping the decision would help win the loyalty of the militia for his expedition.180 In early June, Scott’s force of 794 Kentucky volunteers attacked several Kickapoo towns along the Wabash. Unlike Harmar, who found villages empty, Scott’s men caught the villagers of Ouiatanon near the Eel River frantically trying to escape before his arrival. Warriors initially kept the brigadier general’s men at bay, but eventually succumbed. Scott ordered the fields and town burned along with other items the army could collect such as household goods and peltry. The local trading post, operated by French traders, suffered the same fate. When the men concluded their work, their clearly worn horses and diminishing supplies prompted Scott to turn his men home rather than press on to the Miami Villages. If he had chosen to continue, he would have found the bulk of Native American warriors waiting for him. Later, Scott bragged that he lost no men and had only five wounded while taking forty-one prisoners.181 The raid proved a marginal political success for St. Clair rather than a tactical one. In August, when Colonel James Wilkinson, who had participated in Scott’s raid, led his own expedition against the Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and Kickapoo, the villages destroyed by Scott already had been reconstituted. At the village of Tippecanoe, he reported that “the enemy had returned and cultivated their corn and pulse, which I found in high perfection, and in much greater quantity than at l’Anguille.”182 The same was true at Ouiatanon, where “the corn had been replanted, and was now in high Rufus Putnam, Esq. to the President of the United States, January 8, 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 122. 179 Act of March 3, 1791, ch. 28, 1 Stat., 222–4. 180 Nelson, “General Charles Scott,” 227, 229. 181 Report of Brigadier General Scott, June 28, 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 131–2; Harry M. Ward, Charles Scott and the “Spirit of ’76” (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988), 112, 114. 182 Pulse refers to leguminous plants. Lieut. Colonel-Commandant Wilkinson’s Report, August 24, 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 135. 178

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cultivation.” An astonished Wilkinson continued, noting “several fields being well ploughed, all which was destroyed” by Scott. Wilkinson again burned villages and fields as he trekked along the Wabash during his late-summer expedition, leveling “at least 430 acres of corn, chiefly in the milk” at Ouiatanon alone. “[L]eft without houses, home or provisions,” Wilkinson hoped, the tribes “must cease to war, and will find active employ to subsist their squaws and children during the impending winter.”183 As St. Clair accumulated supplies and readied his men, he planned to direct his attack not solely on Kekongia and the other Miami Villages, but also on the Glaize, a set of Native American communities at the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers (present-day Defiance, Ohio). In comparison to the nearby Miami Villages, the Glaize in 1791 was still small, but its limits housed a similar set of composite communities that included mostly Shawnee and Delaware settlements, but also Nanticokes from the Potomac Bay area, Chicamaugua Cherokees from Tennessee, and some Mingo families.184 French and British traders had moved there and brought their families with them. Likely established in 1789 by Shawnee chief Captain Johnny, the Glaize had rapidly increased in population as refugee communities relocated there.185 Many of the families who moved there had lived much closer to the Ohio River, but because of the persistent conflict, had gradually relocated north and east to avoid destruction caused by vigilante settlers. The number of families migrating to Kekionga and the Miami Villages had intensified during the war, with Shawnee and Delaware families often ending up at the Glaize.186 By 1791, it had become an important staging ground as Blue Jacket and others prepared to meet St. Clair in battle.187 Because of their potential productive power, General Arthur St. Clair planned to destroy the Miami Villages and Glaize. In early September 1791, St. Clair and his men left Cincinnati with an initial goal of constructing several forts to the north in advance of Fort Hamilton to support troops far from the supply base at Fort Washington. Marching with him were just over two thousand soldiers, including a large body of reluctant Kentucky militia, many drafted into service. Even Charles Scott tried to avoid service, not out of cowardice, but instead for fear an association with the yet-unproved federal endeavor might tarnish his reputation among the militia.188 The path St. Clair and his men followed was a well-worn trail that had long tied together interregional Native American trade. It ran from the Glaize south toward Cincinnati and continued through the Natchez trace. The simple road thus made a rudimentary avenue Lieut. Colonel-Commandant Wilkinson’s Report, August 24, 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 135. Helen Hornbeck Tanner, “The Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Community,” Ethnohistory, vol. 25 (Winter 1978), 19. 185 Tanner, “The Glaize in 1792,” 16. 186 Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 178. 187 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 114. 188 Nelson, “General Charles Scott,” 234. 183

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that needed only to be widened to allow passage for the convoy of troops and wagons loaded with supplies. American strategists hoped that constructing a string of forts would help the military gain easier access to the Northwest and thus allow the United States greater ability to police Native Americans who scoffed at American authority. By the beginning of November, St. Clair’s army had finished work on Fort St. Clair and Fort Jefferson. As cool November air washed over the Ohio country landscape, St. Clair struggled to ready his troops for combat. He did not face an easy task. Many of the voluntary militia and infantry were made up of the poorer ranks of Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Virginia society who, despite their emotional interest in protecting their communities, used the military as a strategy for income. Soldiers generally hated the unsympathetic conditions under which they lived, especially compared to the more familiar and casual discipline of militia service. Because militia members received little, if any, formal military training, they lacked the discipline in the line of fire that commanders like St. Clair desired. Early morning parading and harsh penalties for violating rules of conduct represented a new regime predicated on martial professionalism. Conflict between common soldiers and professionally trained officers was nothing new. During the Revolution, George Washington held in disdain the behavior of common soldiers, and little had changed since the founding of the republic. Now St. Clair watched minor revolts spring up in his army and desertions increased. Floggings, poor provisions, and other perceived mistreatments inspired many who absconded. Others defected with loftier, if felonious, plans. On October 31, approximately sixty soldiers deserted with reportedly half looking “to plunder the [military] convoys which were upon the roads.” Alongside the St. Marys River, eighty-one miles advanced of Fort Washington and Cincinnati, St. Clair found his supply lines intermittent at best. Supply convoys faced numerous obstacles as they carried food along the military constructed roads. The military, as did traders, used river travel as much as possible to speed up the journey. But low rivers, especially in summer and late autumn, meant goods needed to be carried over the rolling terrain of the Great Miami River valley. There, muddy roads bogged down wagons already susceptible to falling apart. Beef cattle wandered off and needed to be rounded up. Native Americans recognized these weaknesses and repeatedly took ­advantage of the highly vulnerable and valuable convoys. Because of these troubles, even though the quartermaster arrived at Fort Jefferson on October 22 with a supply of beef and flour for the waiting army, rations ran low. The surrounding environment, in late autumn decay, offered little in the way of additional sustenance, though St. Clair supposed if they had “arrived a month sooner” his horses and cattle “would have been all fat now.”189 Such 189

Copy of a letter from General St. Clair to the Secretary of War, November 1, 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 136–7.

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was the situation St. Clair’s army faced as it pressed forward toward the Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware villages. Early November 4, reveille awoke St. Clair’s men, who gathered to parade.190 As they finished, a party of warriors launched its attack on the invading army, sending the camp into disarray. Led by Blue Jacket, Little Turtle, and Buckongahelas, they successfully pushed the army off their advantageous ­position near the river, only faltering once as St. Clair attempted a feeble counterattack.191 St. Clair’s men fell back, taking shots along the way. “It was, in fact, a flight” admitted a humiliated St. Clair. Warriors skirmished with the army as it retreated to Fort Washington. To speed their way, soldiers jettisoned their arms and supplies. Warriors collected abandoned goods, which they confiscated or destroyed. Horses left behind suffered a similar fate. In addition to numerous losses among the infantry, dozens of officers had also been killed in the action, a loss, wrote St. Clair, which “cannot be too much regretted.”192 In only a short time, months of accumulated provisions, ordinance, and supplies had been destroyed and manpower defeated before St. Clair could deploy them. Under St. Clair, the army and militia had suffered their worst defeat to Native Americans thus far. The unquestionable rout convinced many congressmen that the United States needed to regroup militarily and to open diplomatic channels. Still, most members of the Washington administration believed that war would be necessary. Residents in the Ohio Valley concerned themselves mostly with St. Clair’s defeat and the seemingly interminable conflict. “[T]his is an alarming affair,” wrote one Mercer County Kentuckian in response to hearing about the expedition’s disappointing conclusion.193 Many settlers hoped a victory would ­stabilize the economy and promote growth. As George Nicholas succinctly put it, “The interest of the country necessarily suffered with our reputation; for as emigration is our chief dependence[,] everything that deters emigrants must materially injure us.”194 Emigrants still came, but Nicolas’s point remained. While many Kentuckians continued to look to the national government to deliver an unquestionable victory over the expanding Indian confederacy, many skeptics like Charles Scott felt justified in their reluctance to embrace distant federal leadership in the war. Until the national state reconciled regional and national For a fuller recounting of St. Clair’s defeat, see Sword, President Washington’s Indian War, chapter 17. 191 Sugden provides a more convincing argument for Blue Jacket’s leadership in this campaign compared to Carter’s claim that it was held by Little Turtle. Sugden, Blue Jacket, 118–20; Carter, Little Turtle, 108–9; John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 63. 192 Copy of a letter from Major General St. Clair to the Secretary for the Department of War, November 9, 1791, Am. St. Pap, Ind. Af., 1: 137–8. 193 Samuel McDowell to Andrew Reid, December 8, 1791, Miscellaneous Papers, Samuel McDowell Papers, FHS. 194 George Nicholas to John Brown, July 13, 1790/December 31, 1790 (both dates appear on the letter), George Nicholas Letters, KHS. 190

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agendas, unstable associations between regional and national ­identities would remain weakened.195 The violent conflict persisted during 1792, but without meaningful progress for either side. While Shawnee and Delaware leaders sought to strengthen the confederacy, Americans attempted to organize a council. When warriors killed American emissaries Major Alexander Trueman and Colonel John Hardin, who were heading to the Glaize with peace proposals, even officials who had blamed British meddling as the source of the war began to realize that “it must be Something more than mear [sic] British influence.” “[I]t clearly shows the reason why so many nations are drawn into the war against us,” Rufus Putnam argued, because of “the fear of loosing their lands, or in other words that the Americans intend to take their lands from them when ever they shall think proper without their consent, agreeably [sic] to the doctrine” of the treaties at Fort Macintosh (1785) and Fort Finney (1786).196 Both treaties had been declared invalid by Indian councils called to discuss them after their signing. In contrast to Putnam’s insightful assessment, others preferred more reductive perspectives, as did St. Clair’s replacement, Anthony Wayne, who characterized Native Americans north of the Ohio River as “confident[,] haughty and insolent from reiterated success.”197 Attempts by the United States to open a dialogue with the confederacy met substantial hurdles. On at least three separate occasions in June, July, and October, Rufus Putnam, whom the Washington administration appointed as an emissary, attempted to “open a road” to the Miami, Delaware, Shawnee, and others who had “hitherto stopped their Ears.”198 Putnam managed to organize a council at Vincennes, which was attended by more than 600 Eel River Indians, Weas, Potawatomis, Kickapoos, Piankeshaws, Mascoutens, and Kaskaskians.199 Although a treaty was agreed upon, it had little effect on the Harry Laver concentrates on a regional identity which reified the national. Harry S. Laver, “Rethinking the Social Role of the Militia: Community-Building in Antebellum Kentucky,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 68 (Nov. 2002), 785; David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1997), 248–50. 196 Rufus Putnam to Henry Knox, July 5, 1792, Rufus Putnam Papers, Marietta College Collection, OHS; White, Middle Ground, 456–7. 197 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 24, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 71. 198 Speech of Brigadier General Rufus Putnam to all the Sachems and Warriors of the tribe [sic] inhabiting the Miami or Tawa [sic] River, and the Waters of the Wabash River, June 5, 1792; Speech of Rufus Putnam to the Wabash Indians, July 24, 1792; Speech of Rufus Putnam to the Dellawares [sic], Shawnese, Miamis, Wyandots, and all other Tribes inhabiting the Country on the Miamis & Sandusky Rivers, and on the Lake, October 6, 1792, Rufus Putnam Papers, Marietta College Collection, OHS. 199 Journal of the Proceedings at a Council held with the Indians of the Wabash and Illinois at Post Vincents [sic], by Brigadier General Putnam, September 24–27, 1792, Rufus Putnam Papers, Marietta College Collection, OHS. 195

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conflict because it failed to solve the problems perpetuating the war and to include the most committed participants involved in it. By the end of the summer of 1792, Native American communities in the northern Ohio country and American settlers in the Ohio Valley moved toward assembling confederated efforts against their enemies. The property war tested initial strategies and prompted change in the opposing camps. For settlers, this meant abandoning a local and state-directed war in favor of federal ­leadership and financial support. Native Americans responded by constructing a pan­ethnic confederacy which might more effectively challenge a growing U.S. military presence in the region. For both, it meant constructing new approaches to define the contested borderland of the Ohio Valley.

2 Martial Economies

What distinguished Anthony Wayne’s campaign from those of his ­predecessors was the greater financial commitment of the federal government to this third offensive. With federal support, the military had potential to receive more supplies and better training than it had enjoyed under Harmar or St. Clair. Moreover, the burden of the war shifted from irregular soldiers to a new, professional military. As Andrew Cayton argues, federal political and military commitments to the territory north of the Ohio River during the 1790s helped strengthen national state authority there.1 Likewise, acceptance of national state authority was coeval with the economic growth it fostered north and south of the river. The federal government hired private contractors to furnish provisions, but these businesses regularly failed to meet quotas and delivery dates. Tardy and undersized deliveries resulted from each contractor’s dependence on subcontractors and merchants to cull required goods from the region’s farmers. By the middle of the 1790s, Kentucky’s economy had expanded substantially, but it remained uncertain whether it could support an extended military campaign in the region. Nevertheless, Ohio Valley settlers saw with greater clarity that the federal military contributed to the transforming western economy. Far from endorsing a laissez-faire approach to western development, the federal government enacted a series of policies favorable to an emergent western agricultural and commercial economy.2 In this sense, Andrew R. L. Cayton, “‘Separate Interests’ and the Nation-State: The Washington Administration and the Origins of Regionalism in the Trans-Appalachian West,” JAH, vol. 79 (June 1992), 39–67; Andrew R. L. Cayton, “Radicals in the ‘Western World’: The Federalist Conquest of Trans-Appalachian North America,” in Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg, eds., Federalists Reconsidered (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 77–96. 2 For interpretations of western development that neglect or minimize the role of the federal government or view it as an obstacle, see Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); John D. Barnhart, 1

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Wayne’s campaign served as only one component in broader set of endeavors to define sovereignty in the region.3 Just as the United States consolidated its control of the war effort, Native Americans and British Canadian officials altered their approach to the region as they too attempted to restructure the western economy.4 In London, Parliament authorized the organization of Upper Canada into a distinct province and prepared for a possible American invasion. Seeing the strengthening economic centers near Detroit and Niagara, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada John Graves Simcoe believed a successful military strategy against an aggressively expansionist United States could not be divorced from economic growth. In his mind, only a strong Upper Canadian economy and lines of trade could create conditions which would allow British forces to successfully repel American military and economic advances. Native Americans likewise braced for intensified conflict, relocating the center of their operations to the set of pan-ethnic communities at the Glaize. They also sought to grow their confederacy by reaching out to a broader array of Native American nations who would be affected by American encroachment. Despite common opposition to American expansionism, alliances between Native Americans and British Canada remained uncertain as each pursued their own economic goals in the region. Even as the United States attempted to find a diplomatic solution in 1792, it continued to pursue a path of military escalation. The recent disappointments of Harmar and St. Clair did not sway the belief of many in Congress and the executive that the United States needed a decisive victory against the northern tribes to assert its authority in the region and open the Ohio Valley to expanded settlement. Because few U.S. officials possessed a nuanced understanding of British-Indian relations, the perceived strong alliance between the empire and Indian nations helped propel federal militarization of the West. For its third substantial attempt to assert American sovereignty there, the United States appointed Anthony Wayne major general of the western forces in April 1792. He was by no means an obvious choice. During the Revolutionary War, Wayne had risen through the ranks of the Continental Army, where he caught the eyes of several influential national leaders, including George Washington, who helped advance his career. Most of his military service was in Pennsylvania during the war, but he participated in campaigns throughout the colonies from Fort Ticonderoga to the Georgia frontier. After the war, he struggled to make Valley of Democracy: The Frontier versus the Plantation in the Ohio Valley, 1775–1818 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1953); Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 3 Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007). 4 J. Leitch Wright, Jr., Britain and the American Frontier, 1783–1815 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975), 83–4; Donald Creighton, The Empire of the St. Lawrence (Toronto: Macmillan Company of Canada, 1965; orig. pub. The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, 1760–1850 [1937]), 131–4.

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a living as a planter in Georgia, leading him to seek a military appointment in 1790.5 Wayne did have his detractors; even George Washington judged him “Open to flattery; vain; easily imposed upon; liable to be drawn into scrapes” and possibly “addicted to the bottle.”6 Despite these shortcomings, Wayne obtained the post amid aging commanders, flawed contenders, and political wrangling. Perhaps his most valuable attribute was that both Washington and Secretary of State Henry Knox knew him well.7 Led by Washington and Knox, Wayne became the face of Federalist reorganization of the government’s western military enterprise. Knox presented a plan to Congress in December 1791 that ballooned the regular military forces to more than five thousand men for a western campaign against the Indians.8 This request marked a break from the U.S. policy established by an act of Congress in 1784 limiting federal military authority to command of no more than one 700-man regiment.9 In contrast to Harmar and St. Clair’s expeditions, which relied overwhelmingly on militias from Kentucky, the Washington administration’s new strategy embraced a recognition that greater federal resources would be necessary to secure the West for the United States. Congress fulfilled Knox’s request during the spring of 1792, increasing the number of regiments from one to four, a force of 5,120 men.10 Washington and Knox also reorganized the military from a regimental to a legionary structure.11 Rather than having distinct infantry, cavalry, and artillery, they divided these corps equally among four sub-legions each with twelve hundred and eighty men organized into four companies of riflemen, eight companies of infantry, one troop of dragoons, and one company of artillery.12 Familiar with this military structure from his experiences in the Revolution-era Georgia backcountry, Wayne had faith in its Among the biographies of Wayne, Nelson provides the best-documented analysis of his life. See for instance, Paul Nelson, Anthony Wayne: Soldier of the Early Republic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); Glenn Tucker, Mad Anthony Wayne and the New Nation: The Story of Washington’s Front-Line General (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1973); Harry Emerson Wildes, Anthony Wayne: Trouble Shooter of the American Revolution (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970). 6 “Opinion of the General Officers,” The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, vol. 31, ed. John Clement Fitzpatrick (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931–44), 510. 7 Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802 (New York: Free Press, 1975), 125; Nelson, Anthony Wayne, 225–6. 8 Henry Knox, “Statement relative to the Frontiers Northwest of the Ohio,” December 26, 1791, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 199; Wiley Sword, President Washington’s Indian War: The Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1790–1795 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 232. 9 Sword, President Washington’s Indian War, 79. 10 Act of March 5, 1792, ch. 9, 1 Stat., 241; Act of March 28, 1792, ch. 14, 1 Stat., 246; Organization of the Army in 1792, American State Papers, Military Affairs (hereafter Am. St. Pap., Mil. Af.), 1: 40–1. 11 Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 349fn134. 12 Organization of the Army in 1792, Am. St. Pap., Mil. Af., 1: 40–1. 5

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potential and believed the experiment would offer him a more versatile cavalry than that available to his predecessors.13 Perhaps just as valuable as the surge in the number of soldiers was the time allotted to train them. In his report to Congress, Knox identified the soldiers’ “want of sufficient discipline, according to the nature of the service” as one of the most significant contributing factors to St. Clair’s defeat.14 Wayne agreed that the United States “ought not to risk another defeat” by placing “raw troops” into combat too hastily.15 Discipline of the troops represented an important obstacle for Wayne, as well as any other military commander at the time. While officers typically came from the more respectable ranks of society, most poorer men in the rank and file joined the military to receive bounties, the relatively steady income it offered, a prospect of receiving payment in land, and the potential for plunder. In an era of the professional military, officers attempted to transform these men’s understandings of time and work from one predicated on “natural” rhythms and individual choice to one dictated by the chimes of the clock, the bleats of the trumpet, report of the drum, and the commands of their officers.16 For these reasons neither urban poor nor farmers tended to make good soldiers. A stringent daily regimen compelled men to perform repetitive and often boring tasks at a pace unfamiliar to them. Wayne hoped to spend a significant amount of time during 1792 training his troops before launching a planned assault early the following year.17 Knox approved of an increased emphasis on training, which brought about “progressive discipline.” “After the troops shall have learned their trade perfectly,” he wrote, calling attention to the labor transformation by analogy, “there will be as much difference between them and raw militia as between a master workman and his raw apprentice.”18 An expanded federal military meant additional job opportunities for men in Kentucky and the Ohio Valley. Many recruits came from the urban poor, from places like Cincinnati, and from the ranks of rural laborers who sought more regular pay than seasonal farm work offered. The military nevertheless had a hard time recruiting new soldiers throughout the 1790s. High wages offered in the Ohio Valley discouraged men from enlisting. In a region where most young men sought their own land, the demand for laborers easily outpaced supply. Farmers, eager to keep hands from leaving, bartered wages they could not pay in specie.19 In growing towns, young men made a decent living working any number of professional trades or industries, such as shipwrights, Nelson, Anthony Wayne, 227. Henry Knox, “Statement relative to the Frontiers Northwest of the Ohio,” December 26, 1791, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 198 (original emphasis). 15 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 24, 1792, in Richard C. Knopf, ed., Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1960), 73 (original emphasis). 16 E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present, vol. 38 (Dec. 1967), 60–1, 72–3, 76–9, 85, 91–3. 17 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 24, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 75. 18 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, January 12, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 170. 19 See for instance, Isaac Shelby to Thomas Hurt, August 24, 1791, folder 1, Isaac Shelby Papers, FHS. 13 14

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millers, carpenters, in merchant houses, and at the public landing. As the ­military ­struggled to fill its ranks, Henry Knox forecast that near Cincinnati it would be difficult to raise more than 300 recruits to join Wayne’s army by July 1793 because of high wages.20 Ironically, the expanding commercial economy that exacerbated a property war between the Ohio Valley settlements and the northern tribes also inhibited the military sent to defend it. Notwithstanding the unresolved war in 1792, Kentuckians enjoyed their first summer of statehood without major incident. The relative peace allowed farmers time to plant, cultivate, and harvest without the interruption or destruction skirmishes and war brought. According to Anthony Wayne, “no traces of hostile Indians [could] be discovered upon the borders of the frontiers.”21 He pointed to efforts made by U.S. delegates to negotiate a peace with Indians following St. Clair’s defeat as the source of the peaceful season. Henry Knox found himself pleased at the news that “the Yeomanry of the Country are reaping their harvests unmolested.”22 While white westerners welcomed the peace, many remained skeptical and even confused by the meaning of the new initiative put forward by Congress and Washington’s administration. In August 1792, the governor of Kentucky, Isaac Shelby, sought clarification of who had authority to direct the militia in case of Indian attack.23 Settlers continued to complain to state officials, ­military leaders, and representatives in the capital about the threat to the region. Knox ordered Wayne to “direct such stations or send such patroles [sic] as will afford all reasonable protection to the Inhabitants and banish any well founded apprehensions from their minds.”24 Unwilling to spread his troops too thinly throughout the territory, Wayne quipped that “if all the troops belonging to the U.S. were stationed upon the Frontiers of that County – they wou’d not be deemed sufficient” by settlers in the region. “Unless there was an addition of Militia,” he continued sardonically, “supported at publick charge & detached as Usual two or three to each house, to Assist the farmer in harvesting [and] seeding” among other services, the inhabitants would still grumble about their condition.25 His disinclination to bolster patrols reinforced public apprehensions that little had in fact changed in the policy of the national government. Throughout 1792, Wayne struggled to convince the inhabitants of Washington and Ohio counties “to remain upon their farms.”26 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, April 20, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 224. Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, July 13, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 27. 22 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, July 20, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 34. 23 Isaac Shelby to the Commanding Officer of the Army of the United States at Fort Washington, August 26, 1792, box 2, Shelby Family Papers, LOC. James Wilkinson later wrote Shelby ­distinguishing between federal defense of the region and state defense of its inhabitants. “I do not conceive myself at Liberty to interfere with the defence of the State over which you preside,” he wrote, suggesting that he could not interfere with Shelby’s executive authority in Kentucky. James Wilkinson to Isaac Shelby, October 15, 1792, box 2, Shelby Family Papers, LOC. 24 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, September 21, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 101–2. 25 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, September 28, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 107–8. 26 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, July 27, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 49. 20 21

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Wayne continued to wrestle with local disquiet and troop discipline as he moved his forces in late April 1793 from Legionville, outside of Pittsburgh, to a site located just west of Cincinnati and Fort Washington, which he christened Hobson’s Choice. By placing his men in the rough encampment “near some dirty villages” near the mouth of the Great Miami River, at a distance from town and fort, Wayne sacrificed access to support and supplies if attacked. What he hoped to gain was improved discipline, which he had been drilling into his men. Military leaders commonly believed that the vices of “drunkenness” and “gaming” would “debilitate and render unfit for active service any army.”27 And Wayne worried about the effect the town of Cincinnati, being “filled with ardent poison & Caitiff wretches,” would have on his men.28 There, taverns, inns, public houses, and merchant establishments offered gambling, alcohol, and women to both emigrant and soldier. In February 1792, amidst a riot, “a party of the soldiery” from Fort Washington had committed an “outrage . . . on the person of a magistrate” in Cincinnati, an embarrassment to commanders.29 In this urban frontier, the debauched life of soldiers met the violent male sporting world of the borderland, creating a riotous atmosphere that frequently consumed the town and damaged property.30 At Hobson’s Choice, Wayne avoided such distractions. “Troops must advance out of reach of any of the settlements in order to keep clear of that ardent poison [whiskey] as well as to cut & secure our magazines of Hay” and protect convoys that supplied the encampment, he wrote to Henry Knox. Although Wayne generally issued gills of whiskey to his men, he did so in moderation, even when used as a reward. Wayne’s scheme appeared to pay ­dividends on St. Patrick’s Day 1793, when a party of warriors surprised his troops but failed to gain the upper hand. Wayne praised his men, whom he described as “perfectly sober & orderly,” allowing them to effectively display the “progress” they had “made both in manoeuvring [sic] and as Marksmen.”31 The troops had performed well, but Wayne had just begun to hone the attitudes and behavior of his recruits. If Kentuckians faced uncertainty in 1792, so did Upper Canadians. The western of two provinces in British Canada, Upper Canada comprised much of present southern Ontario, whereas the settlements of the province of Lower Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, August 7, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 63. Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, May 9, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 234 (original emphasis). 29 John Wade to John Armstrong, February 13, 1792, folder 14, box 2, John Armstrong ­Papers, IHS. 30 Richard C. Wade, The Urban Frontier: Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 25; Elliot Gorn, “‘Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch’: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry,” AHR, vol. 90 (Feb. 1985), 18–43. 31 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, March 30, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 212–3 (original emphasis). 27 28

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Canada were built on the lower St. Lawrence River valley, including much of the present territory of southern Quebec as well as Newfoundland and Labrador. Similar to Kentucky, the Upper Canadian economy had undergone substantial changes during the previous decade. Despite protests by fur traders, the demographics of Upper Canada evolved quickly during the late eighteenth century. Prior to the American Revolution, soldiers and traders from the British and French empires populated sparsely settled outposts like Detroit and Niagara. Traders first felt their livelihood challenged when Britain ceded the western lands south of the Great Lakes to the United States at the Treaty of Paris in 1783. As refugee Loyalists fled the thirteen colonies during and after the American Revolution, Britain offered many of them land near these military and trading centers. Successful burgeoning settlements posed a risk to the fur industry by altering how the land was used and prompting adjustments in relations with indigenous peoples. By 1791, bustling towns huddled around military installations and the population of Upper Canada crept to approximately ten thousand.32 Farming and merchant capital grew apace along accessible and navigable waterways. Parliament’s formal organization of Upper Canada into a province in 1791 heralded a departure from the fur trade and an embrace of settlement and commercial development as core policy goals. To shepherd the new province through these changes, Parliament appointed John Graves Simcoe lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, the highest post in the province despite the adjutant-sounding title. Although he administered the daily operations of the province, he ultimately answered directly to the governor of Lower Canada, Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester.33 Unlike Wayne’s fortuitous appointment, his seemed fitting. During the Revolutionary War, Simcoe fought alongside colonial Loyalists as a British officer. After returning to Britain and serving briefly as a Member of Parliament, Simcoe lobbied to obtain the lieutenant-governor position. In 1791 he departed for North America, this time to work with Loyalist refugees and other settlers in the western Canadian territories. Once there he conceived a vision for the colony that wove economic growth with a provincial defense. Simcoe attempted to foster a commercial economy by encouraging staple crop production, local manufacturing, and land sales.34 During the first years of his administration, Anthony Wayne’s preparations for war seemed to confirm his foresight and The entire population of Canada was estimated to be 161,311 in 1790. “Introduction, Censuses of Canada, 1785 to 1797,” Censuses of Canada, 1665–1871, Statistics Canada, vol. 4 (Ottawa, 1876). 33 For a biography of John Graves Simcoe, see Mary Beacock Fryer and Christopher Dracott, John Graves Simcoe, 1752–1806: A Biography (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1998). For Lord Dorchester, see Paul David Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester: Soldier-Statesman of Early British Canada (London: Associated University Presses, 2000). 34 Fryer and Dracott, John Graves Simcoe, 109; S. R. Mealing, “The Enthusiasms of John Graves Simcoe,” Report of the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, vol. 37, no. 1 (1958), 54. 32

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stiffen his resolve. Simcoe’s policies bore fruit by 1794 when a coalition of ­merchants and farmers from the region formed a political alliance that successfully challenged the fur-trading elite who dominated Canadian politics.35 In 1792, however, such an outcome seemed far from certain. Just a few years earlier, Whitehall had entertained notions of creating a unified political order in the Mississippi Valley, one that included Kentucky and would serve as an extension to its claims in Canada. During the late 1780s, evidence suggested the possibility of that outcome. A short-lived secessionist movement became vocal in Kentucky as discontent over the Jay-Gardoqui Treaty spread. When the United States certified Spanish control of navigation along the Mississippi River, western commercial farmers worried that their access to eastern markets could be imperiled by a foreign power and they questioned the commitment of the national government to western economic development.36 Sanguine British merchants looked favorably upon American expansion into the Ohio Valley, especially as long as ligatures of trade with eastern states remained weak. In 1787, John Askin, a prominent Detroit merchant, envisioned extensive trade between Upper Canada and the Ohio Valley. He opined that it was “very likely the Trade between us & the American States will be put on so good a footing that no misunderstanding can Arise.”37 Other traders pursued similar webs of commerce. Francis Vigo and Francois Bosseron, who lived in Vincennes, acted as middlemen conveying goods between Detroit and American settlements in Kentucky.38 Such buoyant appraisals as that expressed by Askin sank after 1790 when the U.S. national government began committing more resources to the war. After two attempts by the United States to invade the heart of the Ohio country, merchants joined Upper Canadian officials in their defensive posture. The prospect of war with the United States shaped how British policymakers approached the region. During the 1770s and 1780s, British Indian agents such as Alexander McKee and Matthew Elliot, who built strong ties with Native Americans in the southern Lakes region and Ohio Valley, continued to nurture a policy of alliance between the many nations and Britain.39 However, as the empire transitioned its economic policy for the eastern Lakes region from the fur trade to commercial agriculture, these alliances became potential liabilities if the United States used Indian violence as a justification to invade Canada. By the autumn of 1791, Britain’s secretary of state, Henry Dundas, instructed Creighton, Empire of the St. Lawrence, 23–4, 125. Wright, Britain and the American Frontier, 43, 47. 37 John Askin letter, January 10, 1787, folder 2, box 1, Francis Vigo Papers, IHS. 38 P. Tardiveau to Major Francis Bosseron, March 21, 1787, folder 5, box 1, and Francois Bosseron testimony, November 26, 1788, folder 6, box 1, Lasselle Collection, ISL; Hyacinth Lasselle to William Henry Harrison, January 15, 1840, Lasselle Papers, Lilly Library (hereafter LL), Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. 39 See Larry L. Nelson, A Man of Distinction among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754–1799 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1999); Reginald Horsman, Matthew Elliot, British Indian Agent (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964). 35 36

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Dorchester to construct alliances that maintained “the strictest ­system of ­neutrality” with Native Americans; only an American attack on British posts might prompt a reformulation of the policy.40 Notwithstanding the clarity of this order, it is important to remember, as Colin Calloway observes, there was often a “difference between official and effective British policy” as Indian agents attempted to weave local diplomatic relations with Whitehall mandates.41 During the early 1790s, ambiguity plagued British Indian policy, especially relative to the United States. British emissaries courted an alliance with the United States for their war with Spain while also working to limit American power west of the Appalachians.42 Individuals like McKee and Elliot, who were heavily invested in Native American communities through marriage and trade, continued to convey strong British attachments even as political signals from London suggested otherwise. What official policy existed appeared to move away from the fur trade and Indian alliances in the eastern Great Lakes, but Upper Canadian defensive preparation for a potential invasion encouraged local commanders to pursue Indian alliances for defensive purposes. Through diplomatic hotchpotch, Simcoe’s administration attempted to balance friendly relations with Indians even as he pursued a demographic commercial transformation of the region that threatened to sour those relationships. As British administrators prepared their defenses, they faced obstacles similar to their American counterparts. For leaders like Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, economic and military problems were often one in the same. Settling the region, bolstering agricultural production, and encouraging merchant investment tended to improve supply lines and communications. Military and administration officials like Simcoe nevertheless worried that a slow-growing region would fall victim to Wayne’s large army. Simcoe characterized the “State of this Province . . . totally inadequate for its defense” and Lord Dorchester agreed in 1793 remarking that “The weakness of the present [frontier] is too visible.”43 To remedy the situation, Dorchester fancifully proposed trying to settle four thousand men in Upper Canada “to make a tolerable Defense in case the Americans should attack them.”44 In a more practical response, Secretary of War Sir George Yonge authorized Dorchester to increase the number of soldiers on the western frontier in early 1794. The British Quoted in Sword, President Washington’s Indian War, 124. Colin G. Calloway, Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783–1815 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 64, 70. 42 Lawrence Kaplan, Colonies into Nation: American Diplomacy, 1763–1801 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1972), 198. 43 Lord Dorchester’s Remarks on the Suggestions, August 4, 1793, and J. G. Simcoe to Lord Dorchester, December 2, 1793, in E. A. Cruikshank, ed., The Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, with Allied Documents Relating to His Administration of the Government of Upper Canada, vol. 2 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1923–6), 3, 111. 44 Lord Dorchester’s Remarks on the Suggestions, August 4, 1793, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 3. 40 41

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government offered bounties worth £15 to willing non-Native Americans, “to Men enlisted in America, as well as this Country.”45 Like the United States, the Upper Canadian government struggled to meet recruitment goals in spite of the impending threat. Simcoe blamed a poor public response in part on the high number of Loyalist refugees from the United States who had resettled in Upper Canada. “[L]ittle is to be expected from a people who have already suffered severely for their Loyalty,” he wrote, hinting at compassion before condescendingly portraying the same “poor & ­dispirited” men as “more apt to regret what they have lost, than to remember what they have received.” However he also recognized that considerations other than disillusionment affected the decisions of provincial men. “[N]o Recruits can be raised” in Upper Canada, he observed, “so very high is the Price of Wages.”46 Just as in the Ohio Valley, Upper Canada’s private sector offered better pay with less risk than military service. Over the next several years, British leaders regularly worried about manpower and the defensibility of their forts. The two most valuable and vulnerable installations, Detroit and Niagara, had only eight and one-half companies assigned to them.47 As Wayne prepared his legion for war in 1793, he sought to avoid rather than provoke an invasion of Canada. Poor supply lines and his contentious relationships with military contractors were poor omens for such an ambitious endeavor. It had become clear to Wayne that adequate supplies would be just as important if not more so than having a professionally trained military. The limited but expanding agricultural economies along the Ohio Valley and in Upper Canada made the acquisition of provisions an endemic problem for both American and British militaries. To address this issue for the United States, Wayne planned to have all necessary provisions and supplies secured in forts along the road into Indian country. Depositing these supplies there, he hoped, would ease the strain on his internal lines that might result as he advanced his troops farther into the Ohio country. This task, however, became herculean in scope. Wayne’s letters reveal not only the significance of provisions to his strategy but also the logistical nightmare it became. The burden of acquiring provisions fell on the shoulders of the Quartermaster’s Department. During the Revolutionary War, this department operated under the auspices of the Board of War, which took responsibility for collecting and distributing provisions and supplies.48 After the Revolution, however, Sir George Yonge to Lord Dorchester, February 3, 1794, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 140. 46 J. G. Simcoe to Henry Dundas, September 20, 1793, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 55. 47 “Stations of the British Army in Canada, 1794, March 27, 1794,” Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 197; J. G. Simcoe to Lord Dorchester, March 14, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 179. 48 Henry M. Ward, The Department of War, 1781–1795 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), 4. 45

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Congress privatized these duties. Each year the government accepted bids from ­individuals and partnerships on several contracts to obtain and deliver provisions to regionally organized combinations of forts and other military installations scattered across the country. Despite their civilian status, contractors received the rank and salary of a lieutenant colonel, signifying their comparable authority and contribution to the military. However, because contractors were not a part of the military, their political position remained far from certain. They officially received orders from the quartermaster general, but commanders could request additional supplies to meet local needs. This system allowed for flexibility between schedules in annual contracts and shifting contingencies in the field. Through the War of 1812, the Quartermaster’s Department joined a growing list of bureaucracies that buttressed and implemented governmental responsibilities.49 Unfortunately for contractors, they could find themselves in the position of the proverbial servant serving two masters. After consulting with commanders in the field, quartermasters general wrote contracts that forecast expected demands during the ensuring year and stipulated delivery deadlines for requisite posts. Typically, contractors deposited provisions in the western ­theater to military headquarters, and then to forward forts. In the Northwest, this meant provisions originally arrived at Pittsburgh. Fort Washington then served as the headquarters until the construction of Fort Greenville in 1793. Contractors soon found, however, that dynamic conditions in the field, especially in a region at war, made fulfilling their contractual obligations a difficult task. Military officials expected them to adjust original orders as new demands emanating from posts altered the master plan. As commanders moved or repositioned troops, contractors likewise altered their plans for delivering goods. For instance, during the autumn of 1792, commanders under Wayne ordered an additional three months of provisions of salt to replace depleted stores. Commanders and contractors estimated quantities based upon a number of determinants, including the number of troops at each site, pace of consumption, and current supply.50 New orders flowed down supply chains to subcontractors, independent merchants, and ultimately salt makers. Disruptions at any point along this network might result in months of delay before the salt reached its final destination. To better address growing problems and demands associated with extensive transportation distances and supply deficiencies, contractors sometimes chose to coordinate deposits in the theater of operations. Even though the western United States possessed a larger commercial economy than its Upper Canadian cousin, the British military fared somewhat better with supplies for several reasons. The King’s Stores, which relied on the local economy, also could draw from Lower Canadian agriculture as well Erna Risch, Quartermaster Support of the Army: A History of the Corps, 1775–1939 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1989), 76, 78. 50 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, September 1, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 82. 49

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t­ rans-Atlantic trade and the imperial treasury when needed. The broad St. Lawrence River and navigable Great Lakes provided a convenient highway upon which Britain’s merchant marine supplied posts throughout Canada, especially when compared to the hardships posed by the Appalachian Mountains. Finally, as John Brewer demonstrates, frequent and distant imperial warfare during the eighteenth century prompted Britain to develop an effective bureaucratic and supply structure designed to meet the challenges of war in an increasingly global context.51 None of these strengths could overcome the relative weakness of the local economies, which severely encumbered any extended deployment of large armies in both the Ohio Valley and Upper Canada. Although the Ohio Valley economy had rapidly expanded during the 1780s, it still lagged behind its eastern counterpart’s. Most farmers produced crops and livestock only at a subsistence level, leading government officials to question whether the region could produce enough to support a large army or if food would have to be imported from the East. During Harmar and St. Clair’s campaigns, military contractors imported beef cattle and produce from the Chesapeake and western Virginia, though some horses came from Kentucky.52 In Upper Canada, Alexander Davison, the agent appointed to provide supplies to British North American forces, experienced virtually all of the problems contractors regularly faced in the western United States. In 1793, he thought it “disgraceful to Lower Canada, where such plenty prevails and the hogs are numberless, that it has not been able to furnish good pork enough for 4 or 5,000 men.” He recommended to Simcoe that Upper Canada work to improve its own market in swine, as well as other agricultural and livestock commodities, for the region’s military force.53 Other colonial officials likewise instructed Simcoe to cultivate the province’s ability to support its troops.54 During the first half of the 1790s, the western economies responded to government enthusiasm for local production of supplies, which proved a boon for regional merchants and farmers. During the late eighteenth century, John Askin established himself as a successful and influential merchant closely linked to the empire’s western forces. From his storefront in Detroit, he directed his son and several other men to travel throughout the region’s farm country to collect beef, flour, and other commodities, which he sold to the Commissary John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 52 Secretary of War to Messrs. Elliot and Williams, at Baltimore, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 99; Nicholas Meriwether to William Meriwether, May 20, 1784, Nicholas Meriwether Papers, 1782–1786, KHS; Randolph C. Downes, “Trade in Frontier Ohio,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 16 (Mar. 1930), 474–5. 53 Alexander Davison to J. G. Simcoe, November 7, 1793, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 97–8. 54 Lord Dorchester to J. G. Simcoe, April 16, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 207. 51

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General.55 Such profitable relationships with government officials sometimes led to unscrupulous dealings by merchants who took advantage of farmers. Askin fell into this group. In 1794, some Detroit townspeople sent a remonstrance to London complaining of “the unfair & unjust, method” by which the Detroit merchant and his partner acquired some flour.56 In this instance, the partners avoided official censure, but their behavior reveals how quickly impersonal commercial relations came to western Canada. Although merchants and farmers saw benefits in diminishing the power of fur traders and augmenting a market-oriented economy, they possessed different interests within the commercial economy they both sought. The produce of most farmers in Upper Canada went to market via waterways. Because the British government severely limited the construction of larger vessels on the Great Lakes following the American Revolution, most crops made their way to market on large canoes and open boats.57 Without adequate roads or capital to purchase watercraft, farmers necessarily relied upon merchants who owned or leased such vessels to carry their crops to town. Some merchants exploited their position by overcharging shipping rates, reducing the profit farmers made on their yearly crops. Angry farmers called for contracts that that “equally serv[ed]” their interests.58 But contracts represented only one of their many differences. Farmers and members of the merchant class fundamentally disagreed on issues of taxation and tariffs, as well as government regulation of commerce, industry, and banking.59 The result was an adversarial relationship hardly unique to Upper Canada. Similar patterns occurred in the Ohio Valley, where merchants made careers supplying the military. Contractors relied upon subcontractors to fill elements of larger military orders. Regional merchants who effectively used their local connections to acquire agricultural products, livestock, and other materials directly from farmers or indirectly through other merchants typically acted as subcontractors. Among the many advantageous places to locate one’s shop was Cincinnati, which had the benefit of being centrally located in the region, situated at the confluence of two navigable rivers – the Ohio and the Licking – and near Fort Washington.60 Not only did soldiers spend their pay at town establishments, Cincinnati merchants forged close ties with officers and other federal officials who funneled military goods through their city. John Stites Gano, one such Cincinnati merchant, had regular contracts with Robert Elliot and Elie Williams. From Cincinnati, Gano filled orders by drawing on the Isaac Todd to John Askin, April 23, 1793, and John Askin to William Robertson, June 24, 1793, in Milo Milton Quaife, ed., The John Askin Papers, vol. 1 (Detroit: Detroit Library Commission, 1928–31), 474, 475. 56 Isaac Todd to John Askin, April 6, 1794, John Askin Papers, 1: 500–1. 57 Edwin C. Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada (Toronto: Ontario Publishing, 1933), 447–8. 58 Isaac Todd to John Askin, April 6, 1794, John Askin Papers, 1: 501. 59 Creighton, Empire of the St. Lawrence, 126. 60 Downes, “Trade in Frontier Ohio,” 481. 55

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agricultural communities north and south of the Ohio River. In a parallel set of ­arrangements, Kentucky merchants won state-funded contracts to support garrisons along important routes, including the Wilderness Road.61 Merchant–state relationships opened doors for exploitation as well as profit. Tantalizing access to federal and state monies led many merchants to gouge the military and governments at all levels. After arriving in Cincinnati with his troops, Anthony Wayne complained that “Merchants at this place . . . charge a most exhorbitant advanced price for every Article.”62 As in Upper Canada, dishonest merchants at times took advantage of uneducated, and perhaps, inexperienced locals. During the 1790s, some farmers and small businessmen loaned their horses through a subcontractor to Elliot and Williams with promises of federal reimbursement. When contractors later claimed ownership of the horses, a tempest erupted. “It would be very hard on the people here,” wrote one disaffected Kentuckian, if the horses “should be turned over to the Agent because [of] the words of a contract which they could not . . . [have] supposed they were bound to provide.”63 In part, manipulative actions as these emerged because merchants quickly felt the effect federal monies had on their business and in the region in general. In March 1792, Samuel McDowell, Jr. hoped reports that “Indians intend[ed] to bring war into our Country this spring with all their force” were true. “I wish they may,” he announced, “for my part I don’t care [if] the war lasts this twenty years or my lifetime [because] while the war lasts we have a ready sale for our beef, flour, bacon and old horses.”64 The number of U.S. soldiers in the Ohio Valley swelled to more than thirty-three hundred that summer.65 The ability of contractors, like Elliot and Williams or Alexander Davison, to meet their contracts depended greatly upon subcontractors – like Gano – filling their orders on time. Subcontractors in turn depended upon both farmers and a good growing season to complete their portion of orders. If harvests fell short, so too did orders and the difference needed to be accounted for elsewhere. In the United States, Elliot and Williams sometimes burdened subcontractors with making up this difference, but responsibility for doing so ultimately rested on their shoulders. When contractors failed to meet their delivery requirements, military commanders often looked to the local market to fill the gaps. When “Joseph Ballenger to supply provisions for the term of six months to the three garrisons to be stationed on the Wilderness road,” July 4, 1794, folder 17 (Military Papers, 1793–4), Isaac Shelby Papers, FHS. 62 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, July 2, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 252. 63 George Nicholas to John Brown, July 13, 1790/December 31, 1790 (both dates appear on the letter), George Nicholas Letters, KHS; Kim M. Gruenwald, River of Enterprise: The Commercial Origins of Regional Identity in the Ohio Valley, 1790–1850 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 53. 64 Samuel McDowell, Jr. to Andrew Reid, March 16, 1792, folder 6, McDowell Family ­Papers, KHS. 65 Henry Knox, “Statement of Troops in the Service of the United States,” November 6, 1792, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 318. 61

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they did so, they typically paid higher prices than merchants and contractors who used advanced purchase and bulk quantities to lower costs. To the displeasure of contractors, military commanders charged them for these independent purchases. In Upper Canada, although these additional costs came from the empire’s treasury, government officials still wanted to keep expenses down. When Lord Dorchester critiqued Simcoe for purchasing directly from merchants after supplies ran low, he recognized exigencies that might lead to such decisions, but observed that “the question must lie, between the necessity of the case, and the injury that may accrue in departure from such a general rule.”66 In the end, the local communities, not contractors, reaped the financial benefits. In the limited western market, regional purchasing had its advantages and drawbacks. Farmers and merchants occasionally withheld goods for the promise of better government prices. Contractors nevertheless tended to rely on local markets when possible because of the elevated risks associated with interregional transportation. Casks, barrels, and crates from eastern states had to make an arduous and treacherous journey over the Appalachian Mountains to the western theater. A primary route brought goods across Pennsylvania from Philadelphia and up the mountains to Pittsburgh, where crafts of varied quality carried them downstream to forts and posts along the Ohio River and its navigable tributaries. To the north, crops and livestock from Lower Canada, as well as those imported from the empire, made a somewhat easier but still unpredictable journey up the Saint Lawrence and across the Great Lakes. Along these routes, careless pilots and navigators, as well as unpredictable weather occasionally sank vessels, instantly destroying months of work. Natural obstacles such as rocks and felled trees frequently damaged ships and, consequently, merchandise. Perishable goods often spoiled en route, especially when packed in poorly constructed or improperly sealed containers. Seasonal weather added further layers of complexity to intra- and interregional transportation. Spring showers in the Ohio Valley elevated river levels, stimulating both trader and emigrant traffic. Contractors attempted to time the transport of their orders from eastern merchants while rivers ran high.67 During summer and fall, dry spells commonly kept river levels too low to navigate, even for low-draught vessels. River stages occasionally rose again during winter months, but solid ice barriers and free-floating ice sheets made river travel treacherous. It is little wonder, then, that contractors and merchants expressed deep frustration at delays and stoppages during good transportation seasons.68 Each cunctation produced exponential increases in shipping time, leaving businessmen empty-handed and indebted, and commanders short stocked. When In this case, Simcoe was referring to the King’s Indians Stores, but the same attitude held true with military stores. J. G. Simcoe to Lord Dorchester, January 30, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 278. 67 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, March 30, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 212. 68 Gruenwald, River of Enterprise, 33. 66

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the British schooner Onondago sank not far from York (present-day Toronto) with a sizable cargo of provisions and military stores in December 1793, anxieties ran high as successful delivery of other shipments became more imperative to sustain troops until replacement supplies could be obtained.69 Notwithstanding the risks of river travel, it proved less expensive than moving goods over land. Even military commanders used cheap water travel as much as possible, especially when carrying supplies to forward forts where the use of roads ballooned costs and travel time. Perhaps more than is commonly recognized, the potential of the western military and economy rested on the seasonal character of the waters. Writing to Henry Knox in 1793, Anthony Wayne argued that “the best mode and means of transporting the Stores[,] forage &c &c to the head of the line . . . [was] to be made by water up the great Miami [sic] as far as Fort Hamilton.”70 Indeed, Wayne and local commanders lamented dry seasons when land routes became necessary. “What I dreaded more than . . . all the Hostile Indians of the Wilderness,” wrote Wayne during a dry August in 1793, was “the failure of the Waters of the Ohio.”71 The value of river and land transport in the region led the Kentucky legislature to invest in several internal improvements designed to ease travel and the movement of goods. The state’s ventures into such projects reveal an earlier commitment to developing a transportation infrastructure than has been suggested by other scholars who examine other state-sponsored investments.72 Rather than rely on private investment, people viewed the state as necessary to promote and regulate commerce, which included the management of roads and riverways.73 Given this view of public authority, it is not surprising that the legislature authorized the opening of new roads and improvement of others to river towns and to connect state settlements to the East. Access to Virginia and the Carolinas came by way of the meandering Wilderness Road, a pitted, hazardous artery through the Appalachians. Emigrants and merchants traveling this route before 1795 also faced potential attack from Native American warriors. Kentucky financed guards to protect emigrants and commerce, but to little effect.74 In 1795, the state legislature approved opening a wagon road to the Cumberland Gap to promote greater trade with Virginia and the Carolinas.75 Lord Dorchester to J. G. Simcoe, January 27, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 136. 70 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, February 15, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 186. 71 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 8, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 264. 72 Taylor notes some legal precedents for state road construction, but does not give much analytical weight to them. George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, vol. IV of The Economic History of the United States (New York: Rinehart, 1951); Harry N. Scheiber, Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and Economy, 1820–1861 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1968). 73 William Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), especially 121–36. 74 Chapter 12, Acts Passed at the Session of the General Assembly for the Commonwealth of Kentucky (hereafter Acts) (Frankfort, 1795). 75 Chapter 15, Acts (1795). 69

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Another sixty-four mile road from Frankfort to Limestone (­present-day Maysville) brought the Bluegrass Region within a two-and-a-half-day bumpy trek to the Ohio River.76 Emigrants and manufactured products from the East, as well as hemp and other Kentucky agricultural products made their way along these popular highways. During the 1790s, as military campaigns against the northern tribes heated up and contractors drew more from surpluses in the region, Kentuckians called for better access to the burgeoning market of Cincinnati and Fort Washington. In response, the 1793 Kentucky legislature approved a wagon road to be hewn between Frankfort and Cincinnati and funded the clearing of obstructions along the Licking River far upstream into the Bluegrass Region.77 During the next few years, the Kentucky legislature moved to develop transportation routes between Frankfort and Cincinnati, as well as to open up commerce more generally with Ohio.78 To the east, Virginians constructed a road between Clarksburg and Marietta for the purpose of driving cattle.79 In many ways, persistent military activity in the region fostered an interwoven regional economy across the Ohio River and Appalachian Mountains. Upper Canada officials similarly worked to improve transportation corridors to promote communication, settlement, and trade. In 1791, the British government financed the construction of a new portage, including storehouses, wharfs, and guardhouses, on the west side of the Niagara River to facilitate commerce along the lakes, especially to Detroit. Local merchants raised £370 for the project, augmenting the £1,090 investment made by British military.80 During 1793, Simcoe ordered the Queen’s Rangers to extend an existing road that paralleled Lake Ontario from Ancaster in the west to London, located on the River Thames.81 The following year, the Upper Canadian House of Assembly petitioned Lower Canada to construct a road from that territory to the “inhabited part” of their province.82 Although sections of the road existed at the time, large parts of it remained uncut.83 Simcoe also began plans to survey and to hew several portage roads from York (present-day Toronto) to Lake Huron. While military exigency inspired the road, Simcoe recognized the beneficial ancillary effect a road would have on the regional economy. He believed it would increase the trade of “those heavy Commodities which are necessary Craig T. Friend, Along the Maysville Road: The Early American Republic in the TransAppalachian West (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005). 77 Chapter 29, Acts (1793); Chapter 39, Acts (1793). 78 Chapter 39, Acts (1794); Chapter 32 and Chapter 45, Acts (1795). 79 Downes, “Trade in Frontier Ohio,” 474. 80 Bruce G. Wilson, The Enterprises of Robert Hamilton: A Study of Wealth & Influence in Early Upper Canada, 1776–1812 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1983), 70, 72. 81 G. P. de T. Glazebrook, A History of Transportation in Canada (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969; rpt. 1938), 134. 82 J. G. Simcoe to Lord Dorchester, July 24, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 338. 83 Glazebrook, Transportation in Canada, 133. 76

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in the North West” and forecast that competition with Detroit would lower prices and “occasion the King’s Garrisons to be furnished at a cheaper rate.” Simcoe would have been keenly aware that farmers near Detroit produced wheat that supported garrisons as far away as Michilimackinac. Upon hearing about the planned route, merchants and traders began speculating on lots along the way.84 Although provincial and state governments used public wealth to support the development of infrastructure, entrepreneurs fueled many early efforts. In Richard Cartwright’s measurement, the Upper Canadian government had made road building “a business that the inhabitants are left to do of themselves as well as they can.”85 Provincial justices of the peace supervised road construction and maintenance with the use of statute labor.86 Cartwright, an agent for contractors in British Canada, had reason to complain. As in Kentucky, Upper Canadian citizens progressively expected their local and imperial (or national) governments to construct internal improvements to support economic growth. Both farmers and merchants pushed such measures, but the latter tended to profit more from their construction. Cartwright especially wanted more roads to connect economic centers in Upper Canada. The provincial assembly had funded only one major road, he grumbled, pointing to the fresh one being cut from the head of Lake Ontario to the River Thames, “where there is not a single inhabitant.”87 One military-proposed road connected Detroit to Fort Niagara and allowed better movement of men and supplies.88 As with other roads, settlement grew along the winding route even as men constructed it. Yet despite Cartwright’s critique of the region’s roads, he remained optimistic about government investment and the future of the region. “So long as the British Government shall think proper to hire people to come over and eat our flour,” Cartwright began in 1792, “we shall go on very well and continue to make a figure.”89 Internal improvements amplified the effect of the military on the region’s economy. In Kentucky, subcontractors as well as military commanders encouraged people throughout the region to see the federal military as a consumer of local goods. Newspaper advertisements issued by the Quartermaster’s J. G. Simcoe to Henry Dundas, October 19, 1793, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 90–1. 85 Richard Cartwright to Isaac Todd, October 14, 1793, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 87. 86 Glazebrook, Transportation in Canada, 114. 87 Richard Cartwright to Isaac Todd, October 14, 1793, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 89. 88 J. G. Simcoe to Henry Dundas, February 23, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 161. 89 Cartwright to Isaac Todd, October 21, 1792, quoted in Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 17. 84

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Department during the first half of the 1790s called for available cavalry and packhorses.90 Independent merchants profited by scouring the countryside for animals and crops. John Clarke offered “Cash and Merchandise At his store in Lexington, for Good pack-horses” and Elisha Winters sought “good second rate cows and calves” that could be sold to the military.91 To reduce husbandry costs, military agents sold horses too overworked to continue service. One advertisement issued by an assistant quartermaster general announced a sale of cavalry horses “for ready Cash,” which were “not fit for service” but “perhaps soon will be,” implying that the military might repurchase the horses it planned to sell once they had recovered sufficiently.92 Kentucky militia purchases further buttressed a martial economy as it independently acquired provisional support and equipage.93 Because the federal government reimbursed states for many of the costs associated with raising and maintaining militia in the federally endorsed conflict, even state purchases could reflect an extension of national-state coffers. The frequency of advertisements intensified in 1794 as Major General Anthony Wayne made his final preparations for a summer campaign, and by then Kentucky merchants expected an influx of federal dollars. In this way, Kentucky became integral to Wayne’s campaign. Kentucky corn substituted for eastern wheat. Kentucky beef cattle and hogs were fatter when slaughtered than those driven from pastures east of the Appalachians. Forage from the Bluegrass Region fed livestock and tall, sturdy Kentucky-born horses formed the core of Wayne’s cavalry; more diminutive equines and oxen pulled supply wagons.94 “[T]here is not part of the Atlantic or Middle States where Cavalry can be supported better or Cheaper” than at Pittsburgh and Fort Washington, Wayne assessed. The same could be said of Big Beaver, Kentucky, where the Mounted Volunteers assembled.95 Although prices in the Ohio Valley tended to be somewhat higher than those in the East, net costs usually ended up being lower for regionally produced goods because they did not need to be transported as far over the mountains. Horse, cattle, rations, and other supplies all passed through Cincinnati before moving to the nearby military headquarters at Fort Washington. Until Wayne relocated his headquarters to Fort Greenville on the eve of his campaign in 1794, Fort Washington housed most military stores. From there, convoys distributed materials to northern and western forts such as Forts Hamilton and

Kentucky Gazette, March 29, 1794, 4; Kentucky Gazette, April 12, 1794, 1; Kentucky Gazette, May 2, 1794, 1. 91 Kentucky Gazette, March 29, 1794, 4; Kentucky Gazette, January 25, 1794, 4. 92 Kentucky Gazette, April 26, 1794, 3. 93 Harry S. Laver, “Rethinking the Social Role of the Militia: Community-Building in Antebellum Kentucky,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 68 (Nov. 2002), 812–3. 94 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, July 20, 1792, and Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, July 27, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 42, 49. 95 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 24, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 76. 90

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Jefferson. The proximity of Fort Washington to Cincinnati on the Ohio River made it an easy port of delivery for Elliot and Williams. Delivery to installations beyond Fort Washington raised a litany of problems that contractors winced at facing. Transportation costs to locations near Fort Washington only marginally affected expenses. Beyond that, contractors and government agents witnessed an “excessive encrease [sic] in the price of the ration” as delivery costs and risks compounded.96 Few good roads existed beyond the towns and villages on the north side of the Ohio and the sixty-footwide main military road from Fort St. Clair to Fort Jefferson might have been broader than most but was of no better quality. Wagons, the objects for which the roads were designed, carved deep ruts in loose soil, damaging wheels and axles and making the way gradually impassable.97 Degraded roads slowed progress, fatigued horses and oxen more quickly, deteriorated animal health, and required larger quantities of forage to be carried, especially from late autumn through early spring when the immediate countryside became barren from overconsumption and decay. Aware of the problems and costs roads ­created, the military struggled to maintain them in fair quality.98 During the summer of 1793, soldiers opened a new road between Forts Hamilton, St. Clair, and Jefferson “to escape the low swampy ground” associated with the previous one.99 Loose soil in the “new country,” however, rendered that road quickly impassable, especially after heavy rains, making the effort an only marginal improvement over the previous path.100 Adding to the problems caused by poor road quality, confederacy warriors made travel along the road risky for supply trains. Slow-paced draft animals and minimal military protection left convoys vulnerable once they departed the relatively safe area near Fort Washington. Civilian laborers held little loyalty to their employers or their property. If a convoy fell under attack, drudges frequently abandoned their charges, much to the chagrin of the small military escorts left to defend supplies. When captured, the victorious war party typically destroyed much of the convoy. When successfully defended, soldiers and contrite laborers might spend days to rustle up horses, cattle, and other livestock that scattered during the skirmish. Fort commandants who depended upon successful delivery of provisions naturally viewed these attacks with pressing concern. These officers occasionally provided additional support for convoys destined for their station but routinely balked at sacrificing members of their own limited garrisons to protect goods going to posts beyond their own even if intelligence suggested an elevated likelihood of attack.101 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, April 13, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 218. Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, May 27, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 242. 98 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, December 7, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 149. 99 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, May 27, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 243. 100 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, February 23, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 193. 101 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, January 4, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 163. 96 97

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Despite real and observable logistical hurdles, commanders held little s­ ympathy for contractors and blamed them for nearly all failures in the supply network. In 1791, Arthur St. Clair cursed contractors who, he felt, had brought insufficient supplies for his expedition.102 After taking command of western forces the following year, Wayne initially tempered his critiques, characterizing Elie Williams, who had influential Federalist connections in Maryland, as “a Gentleman who would wish to give satisfaction” to fulfill his contract, but nevertheless had “been a little negligent” because “some of the provisions [were] not fit for use.”103 However, consistent underperformance on the part of Elliot and Williams in Wayne’s eyes prompted a sea change in perspective. He recast them in his correspondence as little more than “Avericious [sic] individuals” who “always consult their own private interest – in preference to that of the public,” going so far as to argue against the contracting system itself.104 While it might seem easy to view contractors as self-interested individuals who cut corners – correctly so in some cases – the exigencies of transportation were frequently to blame. Finding fault or maliciousness in the individual rather than allowing leeway for unpredictable circumstances fit within a “paranoid style” common among western European cultures across the Atlantic. Gordon Wood demonstrates that conspiratorial beliefs were rooted in “particular assumptions about the nature of social reality and the necessity of moral responsibility in human affairs.” Because humans shaped social reality, outcomes and consequences were solely the conscious cause of individuals in the minds of observers.105 Therefore, when contactors failed to meet commitments for any reason, commanders interpreted their poor situation as part of the deliberate and deceitful intent of the contractors. It did not help matters that from 1793 through the summer of 1794 contractors demurred assuming responsibility for transporting military supplies northward in the face of Native American raids on convoys. Rising violence prompted Elliot and Williams to ask for greater military support to ensure prompt delivery of provisions. An embittered Wayne wrote to Secretary of War Knox, articulating his opposition to “escort[s] for their trifling, & ineffectual convoys regardless of the fatigue & danger to which the troops are constantly exposed.”106 From his and other administrative perspectives, contractors did not “run any risk of loss from an Enemy,” in part because their contracts stipulated that “Stall fed Beef, flour, Whiskey &c [was] at public risqué” if Copy of a letter from Major General St. Clair to the Secretary for the Department of War, November 1, 1791, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 137. 103 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, September 7, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 87; L.  Marx Rensulli, Maryland: The Federalist Years (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973), 122. 104 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, May 7, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 324–5. 105 Gordon Wood, “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century,” WMQ, vol. 39 (July 1982), 407, 409. 106 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, May 7, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 325. 102

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captured.107 This formula did not account for risks and expenses associated with laborers, wagons, horses, and other contractor capital, all of which could be lost or destroyed without recompense. A contentious letter-writing battle over conveying provisions ensued as Wayne made his final preparations for his campaign. Elliot and Williams claimed that the government could not force them to “transport the rations of provisions and furnish them daily to the Troops while on their march” during the campaign. St. Clair’s expedition served as an example: a legion retreat would leave the convoys and workers entirely exposed and vulnerable. Brigadier General James Wilkinson countered that “Contractors are not only to supply stationary posts, but are to keep measure with the movements of the Army or any detachment of it.”108 Elliot and Williams eventually succumbed to the pressure and assumed the lion’s share of the burden. Military commanders and administration officials understood dangers faced by contractors even if they rarely acknowledged them. Although warriors continued the property war with American settlers in the region, military convoys moving north and west to supply garrisons regularly found themselves under threat.109 Shawnee, Delaware, and other men fought the property war “with the avowed design of attacking some of the American Posts if they considered themselves equal to it, or interrupting their expected Convoys of Provisions.”110 At U.S. installations far advanced into Indian country, cattle and horses outside fortress walls made for easy targets that deprived the legion of food and vehicles.111 Incensed, Anthony Wayne could not understand why hostilities continued, even when treaty negotiations were forthcoming or taking place.112 To provide some shelter during negotiations, he warned warriors “that the progress of this Army is not to be retarded or molested in its advancing but shall be permitted to move peaceably & quietly with all its aperatus [sic], provisions & stores.”113 Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami north of the Ohio River felt no need to heed Wayne’s threats. St. Clair’s defeat in 1791 became a rallying cry used by Shawnee and Delaware leaders to great effect in broadening the coalition during 1792. From their strengthened position, they argued that the United Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, December 7, 1792, and Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, May 7, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 149, 325. 108 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, May 17, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 236. 109 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, November 25, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 285; Journal of Colonel Alexander McKee, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 126, 127. 110 R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, May 19, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 238. 111 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 8, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 261–2. 112 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, June 20, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 247. 113 Anthony Wayne to the Western Indians, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 131. 107

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States needed “to abandon this side of the Ohio if they expect peace.”114 Many individuals previously reluctant to join the resistance or who viewed the cause as futile began to find hope in the American military defeat. Larger numbers of Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami families began congregating at the Glaize. By 1792, at least seven towns were established within ten miles of the ­confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize Rivers with a total population of approximately two thousand people, and at times as many as one thousand warriors. Cornfields and gardens there expanded compared to previous years, as did the fur trade. One historian estimates that the preponderance of £30,000 in trade (mostly fur) south of Lake Erie came from these communities.115 The cornucopia made this corridor the productive nucleus of the confederacy. During the summer of 1792, the Glaize likewise became the political “Heart of the Indian Confederacy,” supplanting the Miami Villages, especially as rising leaders like Blue Jacket, Little Turtle, and Delaware chief Buckongahelas made it their home.116 A Grand Council held there in September that year confirmed the ascendency of the polyglot community. At the council, delegations arrived from the Delaware, Shawnee, Miami, Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Cherokee, Creek, Six Nations, Seven Nations of Canada, Sauk, and an assortment of smaller regional nations. In sum, more than twenty different tribes had representation there. Some of the participants hailed from west of the Mississippi River, suggestive of the scope of the efforts to broaden participation in the confederacy.117 Although Shawnee leaders had shouldered much of the burden of forging diplomatic agreements to attend the council, Buckongahelas clarified to all in attendance that these envoys “spoke the sentiments of all the Nations.”118 The council’s goal was to bring the disparate nations into a single confederation that had “one Mind and . . . one Heart and to unite [them]selves firmly together for general interests & safety.”119 Shawnee chief Red Pole captured a central theme of the gather when he forcefully argued that the United States wrongly claimed lands in the Ohio Valley. “[W]e want restitution of our Country,” he proclaimed, “which they hold under false pretences.”120 Copy of a Speech of the Shawanoes and Delawares at the Glaize to Father at Detroit, June 11, 1792, box 2, Native American Collection, WLC. 115 Helen Hornbeck Tanner, “The Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Community,” Ethnohistory, vol. 25 (Winter 1978), 16, 29. 116 Red Pole et al. speech to the Governor of the King’s Dominions at Niagara, October 8, 1792, Indian Council at the Glaize, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 1: 229; Tanner, “Glaize in 1792,” 15. 117 John Johnson to Alured Clarke, June 11, 1792, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 1: 164. 118 Buckangehallis [sic] speech, October 2, 1792, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 1: 220. 119 Cochenawaga speech, October 4, 1792, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 1: 223. 120 Red Pole speech, October 7, 1792, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 1: 227. 114

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Despite the success of leaders at the Glaize in growing the confederacy in 1792, alliances affirmed there whitewashed significant fissures. Participation in the confederacy was grounded in a belief of impending threat and a common goal. The ability of core confederacy leaders to convince their more reticent counterparts of an endemic and magnifying threat requiring cooperation proved one of the great challenges, as did the deliberative and consensus­building mechanisms of governance. Rather than a unified endeavor, the confederacy was, as some scholars have argued, a coordinated set of national wars with contingent participants.121 The high threshold for concurrence proved difficult to maintain as some groups sought alternatives to war or perceived minimal immediate threat to their communities. Cochenawaga, chief of the Seven Nations of Canada, fit the later mold, having agreed to further negotiations with the United States. “[A]s the Americans are wanting to speak to us,” he had announced at the Grand Council, “let us put our heads together and join as one Nation. And if [the Americans] do not agree to what we shall determine on; let us all strike them at once.”122 But by the following spring, deputations from the Seven Nations demonstrated more caution and began a process of withdrawing from the confederacy.123 On another front, Red Pole and other Shawnee chiefs toiled to convince Seneca chief Joseph Brant to support the aims of the confederacy. They tried to persuade him to join by revealing plans stolen during St. Clair’s defeat that indicated the intention of the United States to build permanent forts at the Glaize and the Miami Villages. Brant balked, not wanting to lose control of trade and Seneca territory in New York if the confederacy failed. By the end of the summer, he withdrew his support from the confederacy.124 Large contingents of the Three Fires, an ethnic confederation of Potawatomi, Ojibwa, and Ottawa, also held loosely to the confederacy. While Potawatomi chiefs from the Huron River near Detroit adhered strongly to their Shawnee allies, leaders from villages along the St. Joseph and Tippecanoe Rivers hoped instead for a peaceful settlement. Living relatively distant from the main zone of conflict, they saw less at stake for their villages in the near future. Additionally, some Ojibwa and Ottawa chiefs resented the concentration of power garnered by the Maumee tribes at the burgeoning Glaize.125 Although the Three Fires committed themselves to sending warriors, accumulating dissent weakened the alliance. Leroy V. Eid, “‘National’ War among Indians of Northeastern North America,” Canadian Review of American Studies, vol. 16 (Summer 1985), 145. 122 Cochenawaga speech, October 4, 1792, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 1: 223. 123 August 7, Captain Brant’s Journal of the Proceedings at the General Council Held at the Foot of the Rapids of the Maimis, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 13. 124 John Sugden, Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 137–8. 125 R. David Edmunds, Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 129; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 463. 121

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Eager to broaden the enterprise, a party of Shawnee attempted to gain ­ aterial support from nations living south of Kentucky.126 When the 1792 m council broke, Red Pole departed for Cherokee and Creek territories, where he met with leaders reminding them of hoary alliances binding the northern and southern communities. Not only had Shawnee men and women lived among Cherokee and Creek villages during the past century, envoys continued to travel south to preserve these important ties. A small band of Cherokee even lived among the Shawnee in Ohio. Regrettably for the confederacy, U.S. officials worked hard during the summer of 1792 to persuade southern nations to resist joining the confederacy and perhaps even to side with the United States. Red Pole returned empty-handed to Ohio, where a confederacy of two thousand warriors awaited him.127 Even as the three confederacies  – Britain and its territories in Canada, the United States, and the Indian coalition at the Glaize – prepared for war, the latter two made an effort to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict. At Sandusky during the summer of 1793, Timothy Pickering, Benjamin Lincoln, and Beverley Randolph tried “to induce” the northern tribes to accept the Treaty of Fort Harmar, which required Indian communities to relinquish land south of the Ohio River, recognize the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, and allow settlement on the northern shore of the Ohio River.128 The delegates had little hope of selling that bill of goods. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix had never been recognized by the western tribes and the idea of abandoning lands and moving west fell out of favor among most influential chiefs after St. Clair’s defeat. Instead, confederacy leaders asserted that the Ohio River was the boundary for Indian country. Wyandot chief Sawaghdawunk called on the American commissioners to recall that “Many years ago, we all know, that the Ohio was made the boundary. It was settled by Sir William Johnston. This side is ours; we look upon it as our property.”129 Although the western Indians were well represented at the Sandusky council, few expected a mutually acceptable resolution to emerge.130 Chiefs who attended the council were the least conciliatory of the politicized villages. The pendulum of momentum clearly had swung toward the contingent of chiefs advocating war. With aid and encouragement from British officials, the confederacy called on tribes north of the Great Lakes to join the Sugden, Blue Jacket, 138–9; Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 104. 127 Secretary of War to James Seagrove, April 29, 1792, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 254; Sugden, Blue Jacket, 139–41, 143; John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 55–6. 128 Instruction to Benjamin Lincoln, of Massachusetts, Beverley Randolph, of Virginia, and Timothy Pickering, of Pennsylvania, Commissioners appointed for treating with the Indians Northwest of the Ohio, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 341. 129 Speech of Sawaghdawunk, August 1, 1793, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 354. 130 Letter to the Commissioners of the United States from the Indian Council at the rapids of the Miami, August 16, 1793, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 356. 126

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war. The Sandusky council concluded with both sides as rigid in their positions as when they arrived. Among the sticking points during the council was Wayne’s fortification of Ohio country forts. As early as March 1793, he promised the confederacy that he would build no new forts as long as the council with Pickering, Lincoln, and Randolph continued to meet. The confederacy interpreted this pledge to mean Wayne would halt preparations for war. Wayne insisted that he retained the right to “strengthen and improve” forts already in existence, which he did from Fort Washington north to Fort Jefferson.131 To Native American representatives preparing to meet in council, the United States failed to approach negotiations in good faith. Wayne’s persistence and apparent expectation of war led many Native American and British observers to read American peace efforts as a grand diversion to allow time for military reorganization following St. Clair’s defeat.132 In turn, when Native Americans in Detroit refused to meet American emissaries prior to the Sandusky council, Wayne saw intrigue.133 Perception aside, Wayne proceeded as if no treaty were taking place. He used the time to hone his strategy as well as to prepare his men and fortifications for the coming assault. To assert American power in the region and end the property war, Wayne schemed to gut the Native American regional economy. He elaborated on St. Clair’s plan to build a chain of military forts north into the Ohio country, connecting the heart of the Ohio Valley to settlements along the shores of the Great Lakes. Once at the Glaize and Miami Villages, his men would raze fields with the intent of destabilizing the confederacy’s ability to support itself. Although British Detroit and Niagara were large distribution points, Native American communities received the bulk of his attention. In this sense, the federal military adopted the strategy deployed by American settlers during the property war, only on a grander scale.134 But as a federal endeavor it went beyond myopic tactics of settlers by using the fiscal power of the national state to maintain a military presence designed to shape economic as well as political behavior of northern Indians, truly war as policy by other means. With a diminished Native American center of power in the region, the secretary of war, just as he had at St. Clair, instructed Wayne to establish a “strong post” at the Miami Villages. This fort would support chains of subordinate posts: one to the east as far as Roche de Bout, and another to the south by the mouth of the Wabash River.135 American administrators hoped that installations deep in Indian country would prevent Native Americans from reconstituting their Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, March 30, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 213. Joseph Chew to Alexander McKee, n.d., Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 38. 133 Alan D. Gaff, Bayonets in the Wilderness: Anthony Wayne’s Legion in the Old Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 149. 134 John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 201. 135 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, April 20, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 223. 131 132

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villages there the following spring, as had happened so many times before when militias managed the war. A military presence would also assert the United States’ claims to the region as stipulated in the Treaty of Paris, and set the stage for American competition in the Lakes economy. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson observed in frustration that Britain “excluded the citizens of the United States from navigating even on our side of the middle line of the river and lakes established as a boundary between the two nations.” Consequently, the United States had been “intercepted entirely from the commerce of furs with the Indian nations to the northward – a commerce which had ever been of great importance to the United States, not only for its intrinsic value, but as it was the means of cherishing peace.”136 Without a victory by Wayne, Washington administrators worried that the United States might be effectively sequestered from that vibrant trade. Wayne summed up the concern, noting that defeat might mean that “the Ohio at least, will be insisted upon as the boundary – & a line chalked out which shall effectually exclude the United States from the Waters of the Lakes.”137 Wayne’s campaign therefore was economic in its aspirations, though scholars have neglected this aspect of the conflict.138 American policymakers had tasked Wayne with recasting the economic landscape of the West, but the region’s geographic features inhibited his options even as economic growth in the Ohio Valley created opportunities for his legion. In October 1793, Wayne tactically repositioned his troops to a new site along the Great Miami River, six miles to the north of Fort Jefferson. Once there he ordered his men to build a new headquarters, which he named Fort Greeneville. This move placed his troops approximately halfway between Cincinnati and the Glaize, shortening the burdensome march his men would undertake when the offensive began. A greater number of troops so far north, he surmised, would better secure relatively weak forts along the supply line linking Fort Greenville and Cincinnati. Perhaps just as important, Wayne hoped to distract warriors from disrupting the settler economy that supported his forces. If he had not advanced, he proposed, “desultory parties of Savages wou’d have spread themselves . . . along the frontiers & struck the Inhabitants with impunity.”139 Instead, Wayne speculated that he might turn the tables, “excit[ing] a jealousy & apprehension for the safety” of the warriors’ “own Women & Children.”140 Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, December 15, 1793, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 121. 137 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, July 2, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 253 (original emphasis). 138 The most thorough accounts of the campaign can be found in Wildes, Anthony Wayne; Nelson, Anthony Wayne; Sword, President Washington’s Indian War; Gaff, Bayonets in the Wilderness. 139 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, October 23, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 278. 140 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, October 5, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 276–7. 136

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His decision came with consequences. By advancing, Wayne placed his legion in a precarious situation compared to the relative safety afforded by Hobson’s Choice or Fort Washington. Suddenly, nearly the entirety of his troops faced the same supply problems endemic to garrisons far from their point of supply. Distance and rough terrain between Fort Greenville and the Ohio River limited access to slow-moving supplies. Upon arriving at Fort Jefferson, Wayne immediately recognized the magnitude of the problem, one which would plague the military for the next few decades. Supplies at the fort were only one-quarter what he ordered with flour and grain especially low.141 Few wagons carrying inadequate supplies regularly arrived at Fort Jefferson, barely replacing those that had been consumed.142 Wayne attempted to remedy the conditions of stores but temperamental terrain and supply chains were too much to overcome. With provisions and equipage still not ready in the spring of 1794, Wayne conceded that not only would the campaign be delayed, he could not yet begin to order the sum of his troops to Greenville. “The same cause which has compeled [sic] me to remain stationary,” he wrote to Knox, “will also for the present, prevent me from calling for any Auxiliary force from Kentucky – ie want of provision.”143 The western economy and its rhythms of trade had struck again. A large military presence and relocation of Wayne’s forces to Greenville failed to intimidate Native American communities north of the Ohio River. Warriors persisted in their strategy of targeting settlements near Cincinnati and along the Ohio River, circumventing Wayne’s forces whenever necessary. Intrepid war parties engaged in skirmishes even at White’s Station, only ten miles from Fort Washington.144 With the bulk of American forces so far away from the Ohio River, warriors took advantage of the window of opportunity. During the middle of November 1793, reports circulated in newspapers about attacks at Massie’s Station on the Ohio River, on boats between Limestone and Cincinnati, and on hunters outside Frankfort, Kentucky.145 Military and civilians alike found themselves targeted by warriors of the confederacy.146 Successful strikes on valuable military convoys only seemed to build the confidence of warriors and to magnify the audacity of their actions.147 In frustration, Kentucky governor Isaac Shelby wrote to the secretary of war about the daily threat his citizens lived under. “The army had barely fixed themselves in their winter quarters,” he informed Henry Knox, “before several parties of Indians” Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 8, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 261. Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, October 23, 1793, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 278. 143 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, May 7, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 325 (original emphasis). 144 “Lexington, September 26,” Kentucky Gazette, October 26, 1793, 3. 145 “Lexington, November 23,” Kentucky Gazette, November 23, 1793, 2. 146 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, May 7, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 326. 147 “Extract of a letter dated Head Quarters S. W. branch of Miami, 24th of October, 1793,” Kentucky Gazette, November 2, 1793, 3. 141 142

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launched incursions across “different parts of the State.”148 Wayne too must have felt somewhat exasperated. In May 1794, he noted that “almost every day from some time past,” parties of Indians had been “killing our people and stealing our horses” between Fort Greenville and Fort Washington, a corridor where the greatest concentration of American military might was stationed.149 Wayne’s strategy to offer clear relief to his economic base had failed. Wayne miscalculated the effect advancing his troops would have on confederacy warriors, but the redeployment brought some change to the northern Ohio country. British traders and officials at the Glaize, as at other trading posts, withdrew northward to the foot of the Rapids on the Maumee River in a move designed to protect their property in the event of an American assault.150 Their exodus disrupted established trading and gift-giving. British agent Alexander McKee complained in December 1793 that “Vouchers for the distribution of Presents cannot now be sent, a small part only having yet been delivered, owing to continual alarms, which during this whole fall has been kept up in the Indian Country.”151 What continued did so in no small part because of McKee and others who labored to sustain positive relations with members of the confederacy. Unfortunately for him, British merchants occasionally bungled his efforts by sending defective merchandise.152 Only after April 1794, when the British military rebuilt Fort Miami on the Maumee River, did Canadian merchants once again enter the region enthusiastically.153 Given the initial advance of Wayne’s men, Indian elders reckoned that an American attack likely would take place during the ensuing spring. Until then, confederacy leaders could do little. Warriors returned home during the autumn of 1793 to prepare for their winter hunts. The men and their families collected their gear and departed for their hunting grounds, knowing that the arrival of spring might very well bring war. When the winter frost broke, bands of Maumee tribes returned to the Glaize, where women planted as much as they could in anticipation of congregating warriors. Through May and June, larger numbers of Ojibwa, Munsee, Wyandot, Ottawa, and Potawatomi men funneled into the region. Although the Glaize had offered material support for the war in the region for a couple of years, the swelling population overwhelmed its logistical capacity. By the end of June, thousands of newly arrived men Isaac Shelby to Henry Knox, January 10, 1794, miscellaneous folder, Isaac Shelby Papers, 1750–1826, FHS. 149 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, May 7, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 326. 150 Robert Woolsey to John Edwards, November 2, 1793, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 96. 151 Alexander McKee to Joseph Chew, December 13, 1793, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 119. 152 Alexander McKee to Joseph Chew, May 30, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 253. 153 R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, May 19, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 238. 148

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crammed into villages at and near the Glaize, causing a food shortage even British support could not fully remedy. To provide some relief, chiefs of the Maumee tribes sent word that new arrivals should head to Fort Miami where they could be supplied more easily. Along the way, they further advised that parties take less direct paths to avoid overhunting along the most frequently used routes. By the end of June, more than one thousand additional warriors received victuals outside the gates of the British fort.154 Winter also kept Wayne hunkered down. With the new year, the major general fortified his positions and prepare for a springtime invasion of the northern Ohio country. He sent a small corps of soldiers to the site of St. Clair’s defeat, where they erected a blockhouse dubbed Fort Recovery. When completed, contractors loaded it with supplies, which Wayne planned to use as a site for reprovisioning during the coming offensive. Meanwhile, he and the contractors scoured local markets to fill the military’s orders. Despite their early start during the spring of 1794, Elliot and Williams understood that they again would fail to deliver provisions on time. Wayne consequently delayed his assault until summer. While Wayne looked forward to his legion’s advance, turmoil erupted in his rear. More than two years had passed since St. Clair’s defeat and, for many westerners, federal commitment to the region appeared to have stalled on a number of fronts. With no momentous actions taken, Wayne’s forces seemed inert and impotent. “[I]t is a universal opinion in this state,” summed up Kentucky governor Isaac Shelby in January 1794, “that the system of warfare which is pursued by the United States will never humble the Indians or induce them to consent to make a lasting peace.”155 Equally anxious about local security, a committee of citizens from Cincinnati and nearby Columbia raised money in May 1794 for bounties to be given on twenty Indian scalps collected in an area more than 200 square miles surrounding the two towns. Subscribers to the group could receive between $117 and $136 for each scalp, while nonsubscribers could expect between $95 and $100, “federal troop[s] excepted.”156 News that George Washington appointed John Jay emissary to negotiate a new treaty with Britain added to their dismay. Westerners, especially Republicans, viewed the Federalist Jay with contempt, not only for his ideological pronouncements but because they believed that he held little interest in western development. Petitioners identified him as “the enemy of the Western country” and the “Evil Genius of Western America.” One group of protesters expressed its scorn by guillotining, burning, and then exploding an effigy of Jay so violently “that after it, there were scarcely to be found a particle.”157 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 160–1. Isaac Shelby to Henry Knox, January 10, 1794, miscellaneous folder, Isaac Shelby Papers, 1750–1826, FHS. 156 Centinel of the North-Western Territory, May 17, 1794, 3. 157 Resolutions issued by a meeting of the Citizens assembled in Lexington on May 20, 1794, Kentucky Gazette, May 31, 1794, 2; An Account of the Burning the Effigy of John Jay on the 24th May 1794, box 10, Breckinridge Family Papers, LOC. 154 155

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In addition to the continuing Indian war and perceived British ­entanglements with Indians, free navigation of the Mississippi remained a problem. Each of the major imperial players in the region, Spain, Britain, and the United States, coveted Mississippi River trade and jealously wanted to prevent competition from their rivals. For its part, Spain viewed U.S. expansion as a threat to its territories in Louisiana and Florida and used access to river trade as leverage to protect its colonial interests. With that in mind, Spain closed the lower Mississippi River to all but Spanish shipping in 1784.158 Although earlier westerners viewed New Orleans and Quebec as potential trade routes to the eastern states, by 1793 most commercially oriented settlers focused solely on the Mississippi River and New Orleans. They argued that they possessed “free use” of the river as a “NATURAL RIGHT” of living in a territory “­bordering on the waters communicating with” the Mississippi.159 Merchants similarly sought to open the river to increase the “Credit . . . of the produce of Kentucky.”160 Since the 1780s, Kentuckians had frequently petitioned the national government to open the river, with mixed results. Some Federalists feared opening the river to American commerce might divert western trade and foster commercial ties to Spanish New Orleans, leading to an uncontrolled western expansion that might drain eastern labor markets and splinter the republic.161 In this narrow rhetorical sense, Kentucky Republicans were right to suspect that the level of Federalist dedication to navigation of the Mississippi represented “the partial and local interest of a few Commercial cities” in the East, even if the sum of administrative actions told a different story.162 Although trade on the Mississippi River and wars with Native Americans would have seemed two distinct issues to most Americans in the East, some westerners took a different view. Commercial farmers and merchants relied on the rivers as conduits of the region’s economy. Many Kentuckians believed that regional expansion and prosperity could occur only if trade flowed both safely and cheaply. A group of petitioners from Kentucky described “the detention of the Posts and the interruption of the Navigation of the Mississippi River” as “injuries and insults of the greatest atrocity and the longest duration” affecting reliable economic growth163 Another commentator couched “these two grand and important objects” in terms of the future of the Union. “[I]f there exist David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 279. 159 Rufus Putnam to Ames, 1790, Rufus Putnam Papers, Marietta College Collection, OHS; Kentucky Gazette, November 16, 1793, 2, and February 15, 1794, 1. 160 Petition of several merchants of Lexington to Isaac Shelby, n.d., Shelby Family Papers, LOC. 161 Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 40–1. 162 ARISTIDES, “To the inhabitants of western America,” Kentucky Gazette, January 4, 1794, 1, and January 11, 1794, 1. 163 Petition to the President and Congress of the United States of America, 1793, box 10, Breckinridge Family Papers, 1752–1965, LOC. 158

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more than the name of Federal association,” he resolutely declared, “now is the important crisis.”164 While most Kentuckians attempted to work within the federal system, others took alternative approaches to alleviate the situation. Some carried the torch of secession, which had roots in the region extending back to the 1780s. Most support for secession faded by 1789 after President George Washington, in a politically savvy maneuver, offered several key instigators appointments to federal posts, which they accepted. Nevertheless, advocates for abandoning the Union and allying with Spain or Britain enjoyed a small revival by 1793 as American navigation of the Mississippi River remained in question.165 Even Anthony Wayne became concerned after receiving intelligence of an “inflammatory” meeting with Anglophile undercurrents. Although secessionist discourse remained modest in scope and intensity, popular uncertainty about whether the republican experiment would prove successful made its existence a serious matter. Other disaffected westerners embraced less radical measures to vent their antipathy. Those with financial means conveyed their lack of confidence in the national government by refusing federal credit. In June 1794, the contractor Robert Elliot informed Wayne that “Inhabitants peremptorily refused to receive Bank Notes in payment for any kind of supplies nor would they deliver any unless first paid for in Specie.” If such an attitude spread, he wrote, $33,705 in bank bills sent to fund part of the campaign would be useless.166 More militant Kentuckians planned to invade Spanish territories rather than secede to that empire or wait for federal action. During the summer of 1794, rumors of two thousand Kentuckians preparing a campaign under George Rogers Clark jolted officials from state government to Washington’s cabinet.167 Although participants in secession and invasion plans did not represent most individuals in the Ohio Valley, their actions, along with those of creditors, evinced varying levels of widespread skepticism of the national state and the region’s future. The specter of rebellion in western Pennsylvania in 1794 offered further evidence of the breadth of unease. What people popularly referred to as the whiskey excise tax was, in fact, two federal laws levying duties on all spirits.168 The purpose of the legislation, part of Alexander Hamilton’s fiscal program, was to Kentucky Gazette, January 4, 1794, 1. Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 56, 192. 166 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, June 11, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 343 (­original emphasis). 167 Centinel of the North-Western Territory, January 25, 1794, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 258n1; Conference Concerning the Insurrection in Western Pennsylvania, August 2, 1794, in Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke, eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 17 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–87), 12–3; Isaac Shelby to Thomas Jefferson, January 13, 1794, and Extract of a letter sent from the Secretary of War to Major General Wayne, March 31, 1794, American State Papers, Foreign Relations (hereafter Am. St. Pap., For. Rel.), 1: 455–6, 458. 168 Act of March 3, 1791, ch. 15, 1 Stat., 199–214; Act of May 8, 1792, ch. 32, 1 Stat., 267–71. 164 165

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collect revenue toward partially drawing down the nation’s revolutionary war debt. The highly controversial tax had little support in the West, where many farmers produced whiskey on a small scale and often used it in lieu of, or in addition to, pay for their laborers.169 Everyone seemed affected. The new tax cut into the profits of merchants and tavern keepers; farmers saw labor costs increased; laborers felt the pinch in their wages; and brewers believed such a tax would concentrate production into the hands of more efficient large-scale manufacturers. Moreover, many westerners believed successful implementation of the whiskey tax might diminish a widely used source of barter as well as drain the region of precious specie. Western Pennsylvanians took up arms against the excise tax in what became known as the Whiskey Rebellion. To the southwest, Kentuckians found little need to resort to violence as federal administrators found few individuals willing to serve as collectors and those who did quickly resigned. Perhaps most telling of popular attitudes, Kentucky judges, prosecutors, and marshals brought forward few cases and grand jurors refused to find indictments against scofflaws.170 As summer 1794 began, Kentuckians had reason to question the federal government. Stopped Mississippi River traffic and the Indian war provided fodder aplenty for merchants and farmers to chew discontent. On the surface, Kentucky appeared less volatile than western Pennsylvania, but this was just gilding. Potential for protest and revolt remained high with secessionists and filibusters against Spain among the most visible firebrands. Although few Kentuckians would have embraced disunion, persistence of the status quo held only negative outcomes for both the young state and national state. The frustrating stasis appeared to snap in late June when the confederacy launched an unsuccessful attack on Fort Recovery. By the middle of June, the Glaize and other Maumee River settlements had become crowded with thousands of warriors even as more continued to trickle into the region. “From the reports sent to me by those not accustomed to exaggerate,” Detroit commandant Colonel Richard G. England wrote to Simcoe, “the Indians now assembled amount to sixteen hundred, a more formidable force considerably than ever collected since the contest commenced.”171 Shawnee and Delaware leaders particularly had been “constantly calling upon” all Native American communities in the Lakes region to send as many warriors as possible during the spring months to collect at the Glaize and “oppose the Enemy.”172 The logistical strain of supporting so many people overwhelmed the Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 73. Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau, “The Whiskey Rebellion in Kentucky: A Forgotten Episode of Civil Disobedience,” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 2 (Autumn 1982), 242, 243–4. 171 R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, June 19, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 278. 172 Message Delivered by Two Delaware Chiefs Who Arrived at the Foot of the Rapids with Six Scalps from the Glaize, May 24, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 250. 169 170

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resources of the Maumee Valley and imperial supply chains. After a meeting led by Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware war chiefs, the confederacy decided to launch an offensive designed to catch Wayne’s forces unaware. In May, Blue Jacket reported seeing “great numbers of Boats with troops going down the Ohio,” which he supposed were Kentuckians and other Ohio Valley settlers “going against the Spaniards.”173 Having considered the available intelligence, they divided into two large parties taking separate paths but intending to reunite near Fort Recovery. From there they planned to proceed south of Fort Greenville, cutting off the legion’s supply lines. Delaware chief Buckongahelas led one of the parties along a westerly route to intercept Wayne’s forces should he deploy troops to attack the villages along the White River in response to the advance of the confederacy’s men. Shawnee chief Blue Jacket led the other, comprised of Miami, Mingo, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Shawnee, and Wyandot warriors, on a more direct path to Fort Recovery.174 As Blue Jacket and his men approached Fort Recovery on June 30, scouts reported seeing a supply train. Warriors of the Three Fires (Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwa) argued that the party should attack both convoy and fort. Blue Jacket, with other Shawnee and Delaware leaders, disagreed but could not sway their minds. The Three Fires warriors refused even to wait for Buckongahelas’ group to arrive. Approximately two thousand warriors attacked the wagon train outside the walls of Fort Recovery.175 Ninety riflemen and fifty dragoons did what they could to protect the convoy and hold the warriors at bay. Even though the exposed men and their wagons managed to retreat within the confines of the fort, the party of warriors continued to fire upon the installation, killing approximately fifty men.176 Unfortunately for Blue Jacket’s company, even if they had succeeded in overtaking the wagons they would have found them empty, having deposited provisions in Fort Recovery the day before. Eager to achieve battlefield glory, Blue Jacket’s forces launched another assault on July 1, but again failed to take the garrison. With a number of warriors injured and killed, the entirety of the party retreated and began its journey back to the Glaize. Along the way, blame for the failed assault passed between the two factions. Blue Jacket, along with other Shawnee and Delaware warriors, characterized the Three Fires decision to attack Fort Recovery as rash and imprudent. The Three Fires, whose participation had been tenuous from the start and whose ranks had taken most of the casualties, countered by accusing Shawnee and Delaware warriors of not Extract of a Letter from Mr. Thomas Duggan, May 24, 1794, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 248. 174 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 161, 164; Harvey Lewis Carter, Life and Times of Little Turtle: First Sagamore of the Wabash (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 130. 175 John Butler to Joseph Chew, June 14, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 265; Sugden, Blue Jacket, 164. 176 Alexander McKee to R. G. England, July 5, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 306. 173

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providing sufficient support. Frustrated in the dissent, the Three Fires departed for home, reducing Blue Jacket’s warriors by half.177 Later, Alexander McKee simplified the dispute. “[H]aving completed the belts they carried, with scalps and prisoners and having no provisions” of their own at either the Maumee Rapids or the Glaize, the Three Fires quit the confederacy.178 Huron River Potawatomi stayed, but Blue Jacket returned to the Glaize with a smaller army. Shortly thereafter, Buckongahelas returned also with disappointing news. The offensive had failed; Wayne’s supply lines remained intact. Perhaps more important was the food shortages at the Glaize and along the Maumee, which remained unalleviated. To remedy the situation, men left to hunt for food, further reducing the number of warriors available should Wayne advance. Despite Alexander McKee’s prediction that “Indians in this country will feel a sensible diminution of their strength” by the loss of the Three Fires, leaders at the Glaize continued to prosecute the war to the best of their abilities.179 Indeed, while many scholars view the defeat at Fort Recovery as the pivotal moment of the war, the departure of Three Fires warriors, while not insignificant, was but one of a long series of political obstacles core confederacy leaders had wrestled with since cooperative efforts had begun.180 Work began anew to bring departed warriors back to the council fires.181 While tested in this instance, the confederacy remained largely intact. Within a month, the pattern of warfare returned to what it had been prior to the failed assault on Fort Recovery. Rotations of smaller parties left the Glaize tasked with disrupting Wayne’s communication and supply lines, capturing and diverting scouting parties, as well as generally confounding American attempts to launch a campaign. The Three Fires collectively did not return but many new families arrived to provide support, as well as small groups who left in the wake of the Fort Recovery political fiasco. Improved numbers lifted spirits at the Glaize.182 Little Turtle departed for Detroit, where he looked to bolster the confederacy’s strength by politely demanding that R. G. England supply twenty men and two pieces of cannon for a second assault on Fort Recovery. If the British failed to fulfill the request, Little Turtle bluffed that the confederacy would “desist Sugden, Blue Jacket, 168; Edmunds, Potawatomis, 130. Alexander McKee to R. G. England, July 5, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 306. 179 Alexander McKee to Joseph Chew, July 7, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 310. 180 Most scholars characterize defeat as inevitable after the assault on Fort Recovery based on either the failed assault or political disputes exacerbated by it. Sword, President Washington’s Indian War, 278; Francis Paul Prucha, The Sword of the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783–1846 (London: Macmillan Company, 1969), 36; Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 156; James Ripley Jacobs, Beginnings of the U. S. Army, 1783–1812 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), 171; Wildes, Anthony Wayne, 416; Gaff, Bayonets in the Wilderness, 250. 181 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 168–9. 182 Alexander McKee to J. G. Simcoe, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 344. 177 178

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in their plan of attempting to stop the progress of the American Army.”183 England remained ambivalent, and Little Turtle left Detroit disappointed and without the cannon. As Blue Jacket, Little Turtle, and the others regrouped at the Glaize, Anthony Wayne waited for fifteen thousand mounted volunteers to arrive from Kentucky. When the first of the cavalry appeared at Fort Greenville in the middle of July, Wayne launched his campaign in earnest.184 He ordered woodsmen to hew a road north toward the Glaize. On July 28, Wayne’s four sub-legions marched with the smell of fresh woodchips leading their way. When the men reached the banks of the St. Mary’s River on August 1, they constructed Fort Adams, a blockhouse, before departing again, this time to a point downstream along the Auglaize River. As Wayne approached the Glaize, Indian scouts brought word of his arrival. Despite the extraordinary time and labor that members of the confederacy invested in the towns and fields of the Glaize, they abandoned them just as they had previous villages when attacked by American forces. Herein lay perhaps the most decisive issue for the confederacy. While its leaders had adjusted their productive and political strategy by concentrating their settlements in the Maumee corridor, they had not adjusted their tactics to account for the enhanced significance of those settlements. The Glaize and surrounding communities, as well as the confederacy by extension, became vulnerable proportionally to the economic success of its residents, and the fertile valley rewarded them for their labor despite the shortages experienced that summer. Consequently, the abandonment of the Glaize, far more than the failed assault at Fort Recovery, signaled a devastating moment for the confederacy. Women and children moved to safer locations until the end of the campaign: Shawnee to Sandusky; Delaware to the White River villages; and Miami to Kekongia, a principal village in the Miami Villages.185 Warriors retreated to Fallen Timbers, a grove of blown over trees along the Maumee River, just south of Fort Miami and McKee’s Store, where they received what food and material support the British could offer.186 The advance of American forces put Upper Canada’s administration on alert. Simcoe’s leadership grew from the idea that “the Establishment of a Government in Upper Canada, was absolutely necessary for the preservation of the British Commerce against the Aggressions of the United States.”187 With American forces on the move, the work of the previous three years seemed thrown into jeopardy. As Colonel R. G. England readily admitted, “God knows R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, July 22, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 334. 184 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, July 27, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 350. 185 Carter, Little Turtle, 133. 186 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 173. 187 J. G. Simcoe to Henry Dundas, July 5, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 305. 183

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this Country is by no means in a situation to commence hostilities.”188 Simcoe resolved to maintain a British regional influence, even if the empire’s policy had moved away from direct conflict with the Americans. On August 5, he proposed offering the confederacy assistance, which “must absolutely be extended to the demolition of Fort Recovery & if possible, that of Fort Jefferson, or the entrenched Camp at Greenville.”189 Yet despite Simcoe’s strong words, the lieutenant-governor could do little. In 1794, Britain wished to avoid war with the United States so that it could focus on more pressing issues. Since the guillotining of Louis XVI and the subsequent Reign of Terror in 1793, Tory leadership in Whitehall worried about spreading Jacobinism, not only on the Continent, but also at home. After reluctantly joining the Coalition powers against France in 1793, Britain did not need distractions from its colonies.190 Because Federalists in the United States appeared to oppose the radicalism of the French Revolution and recalled French ambassador Edmond-Charles Genêt in 1794, Prime Minister William Pitt’s administration had, in fact, warmed to American diplomacy.191 These factors left Simcoe and Upper Canadian forces with few options but to maintain a defensive posture. “It is obvious that if Wayne attacks the Miamis Post a War commences between Great Britain and the United States,” he wrote to Alexander McKee, walking back earlier belligerency. Accordingly, the confederacy could receive support only “if they choose to retire to our side of the water,” north of the Great Lakes.192 No one communicated this policy to the members of the confederacy. The legion arrived at the abandoned Glaize on August 8 and began to implement its strategy for ending the war. The legion erected Fort Defiance, initially intended as a defensive post in case the confederacy overran the legion forcing a retreat, but also meant to provide disincentive for Maumee nations who might resettle the area after the war. After a half-hearted pitch for peace that went unanswered, Wayne’s troops departed on August 15, with Fallen Timbers squarely in their sights.193 Ten miles short of their destination, Wayne established another blockhouse to store all provisions not necessary for the upcoming battle. Having secured his ability to sustain his troops for the next few days, Wayne marched his men down the Maumee River. On the cool, wet R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, July 22, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 334. 189 J. G. Simcoe to Henry Dundas, August 5, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 353. 190 For a description of these events, see Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 57–74. 191 Wright, Britain and the American Frontier, 95–6. 192 J. G. Simcoe to R. G. England, August 17, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 386. 193 Anthony Wayne to the Western Indians, August 13, 1794, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 371–2. 188

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morning of August 20, 1794, the U.S. legion met warriors of the northern ­confederacy on the field of battle at Fallen Timbers. Although warriors anticipated the arrival of the American Legion, Wayne somehow managed to catch them off guard. Some historians have estimated as many as thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred warriors made camp at Fallen Timbers, but when Wayne arrived, fewer than one thousand met him on the pitch. Some men had gone hunting because of the scarcity of food, one group of Wyandot and Ottawa had gone a short distance away to obtain more supplies, and still others remained asleep.194 On the battlefield, a small group of French Canadian militia, who arrived despite specific instructions to the contrary by the colonial government, joined warriors of the confederacy. Some members of Detroit’s fur-trading community organized this independent militia to defend their perceived stake in the conflict.195 To the disappointment of both, the battle was nothing short of a rout, though reports noted that “Some of the Nations fought well.” In less than an hour, the confederacy’s lines broke and warriors retreated to Fort Miami. They arrived there to find the gates closed and British officers refusing to offer assistance or protection. Enraged at the failure of the British to fulfill their promise of military support, Buckongahelas never forgave them. The remaining warriors scattered northward, many “determined” to give the United States “another brush.”196 Wayne kept his troops near Fort Miami for three days. During that tenure, he began to implement his second agenda – to undermine the confederacy’s economy and ability to produce for itself. He ordered his men to gather whatever crops remained near the British installation. Some went to his men, sparing full issuance of rations, and the rest was stored for use in the coming days. What his troops did not eat or appropriate, he ordered razed. “[A]ll the Houses & Corn fields,” recounted Wayne, “were consumed & destroyed for a considerable distance both above & below Fort Miamis as well as within pistol shot of the Garrison.” The houses, stores, hay, and other property of Alexander McKee, whom Wayne and many Americans erroneously blamed for being “the principal stimulator of the war,” also burned under American torches.197 British officers at Fort Miami issued strict orders to their men not to engage the Americans, leaving them little more than “tacit spectators to this general devestation [sic] & Conflagration.”198 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 176; Carter, Little Turtle, 135; Sword, President Washington’s Indian War, 303. 195 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 173–4. 196 William Campbell to R. G. England, August 20, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 395–6. 197 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 28, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 354; William Campbell to R. G. England, August 22, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 404. 198 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 28, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 354. 194

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On the return trip to Fort Defiance, Wayne practiced the same ­devastating methods upon the extensive agricultural fields that lined the Maumee River. His men took their time but worked with purpose, “laying waste the Villages & Corn fields for about Fifty miles.” At Fort Defiance, Wayne’s troops took advantage of the “great Quantity of Corn” and vegetables that remained at the confederacy’s cornucopia. Before the major general departed, he assured Henry Knox that all the area’s produce would “be consumed or destroyed . . . in the course of a few days.”199 During that time his men ate well. Yet even with agricultural abundance around him, Wayne began to feel the strain on his internal lines as supplies ran low. Eager to advance as many prepared rations as quickly as possible, he took the remarkable step of pressing his mounted volunteers to use their war steeds as pack animals.200 The pace of the campaign transformed most of the original packhorses to wisps of their former selves, and many died. On September 14, after another unanswered call for peace, Wayne’s soldiers departed Fort Defiance heading west to the Miami Villages. After hewing a forty-eight-mile road in just over two days, the legion arrived unmolested. Villagers, as well as refugee Miami women and children, had already fled to neighboring Potawatomi villages. At the Miami Villages, Wayne repeated the destruction; some of his troops razed the extensive fields while others constructed Fort Wayne. The major general succeeded where St. Clair had failed. American military installations now stood in the heart of each productive center of the confederacy. Tens of thousands of acres of lush agriculture lay waste in a matter of days. In their place, Forts Wayne and Defiance offered the United States an opportunity to maintain a military presence north of the Native American hunting grounds. As Wayne watched his troops destroy the labors of so many Indian women, he ruminated on the significance of his victory. Given the confederacy’s economic circumstances, he mused, “their future prospects must naturally be gloomy & unpleasant.”201 Although Wayne provided an accurate assessment of the confederacy’s situation, his own immediate prospects did not look much better. By the time his troops completed Fort Defiance, it was the middle of October. Wayne understood that he could not keep his whole force in the northern Ohio country much longer. His internal lines, stretched to their breaking point, did not improve with time. Worse, on October 6, a party of warriors had killed quartermaster contractor Robert Elliot, who had accompanied the campaign to oversee the collection and transportation of supplies. In Wayne’s estimation, Elliot’s death only “added to the deranged state of that Department.”202 Elie Williams Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 28, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 354–5. Nelson, Anthony Wayne, 269. 201 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, September 20, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 356–7; Carter, Little Turtle, 133. 202 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, October 17, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 359. 199 200

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promised to continue supplying the military through April, but his words could not alleviate immediate disruptions caused by his partner’s death.203 To relieve pressures on his supplies, Wayne dismissed the Kentucky Mounted Volunteers on October 13, a temporary solution to the crisis. “[T]wo powerful obsticles [sic]” faced the army in his estimation: “the necessary supplies & the expirations of the terms of service for which the troops were inlisted [sic]!”204 Only by eliminating the first could he address the second. Thus, as October drew to a close, Wayne’s legion, less a corps to garrison the new American installations, departed Fort Wayne and finally entered the gate of Fort Greenville on November 2. Evidence quickly emerged suggesting Wayne achieved the endgame he sought. Attacks on settlers, convoys, and soldiers continued, but many Indian appeared resigned to peace after observing the destruction leveled against their homes and economy.205 Most members of the confederacy had few options other than to turn to their presumptive ally, despite a failure of British military support at Fallen Timbers and Fort Miami. Because the war had been a autumn campaign, another crop could not be cultivated before the first frost. Men and women displaced from the Glaize and Miami Villages dispersed to smaller villages and British forts for support through the winter. The empire had foreseen such an outcome and prepared to meet it. Still, without ample supplies of corn, chiefs cut short winter hunts or called them off altogether. By the end of December, leaders from Wyandot villages near the Sandusky River, along with others, petitioned Wayne to guarantee a “suspension of hostilities . . . to afford the Indians an Opportunity to make their fall & winter hunt unmolested.” Wayne enjoyed control of important Native American hunting grounds in the central Ohio country. Those lands, he wrote to Knox, remained “completely within our power & . . . within striking distance . . . hence their solicitude.”206 Even if the United States did not control the economy north of the Ohio, it had gained a strong hand on it. Among the great strengths of the confederacy in the property war had been its resilience when Americans destroyed its scattered villages. One trend resulting from the property war was consolidated villages that pooled productive and military power. For two years the confederacy reaped benefits from its growing corridor, allowing its members to support a regional war. The confederacy’s gathered military power held meaningful potential, as evidenced by its near successful effort to cut of Wayne’s supply lines and force another American retreat. These added benefits came paired with perilous risks. When Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, December 5, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 365–6. Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, September 20, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 357. 205 Major John H. Buell to General Henry Knox, October 6, 1794, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 116. 206 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, December 23, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 369–70. 203

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Wayne razed the fields and trading centers at the Glaize and Miami Villages, he destroyed the core of an economy, not an isolated cell. Defeat left the Native American-centered Ohio country economy in shambles, and their control in question. The confederacy had lost the property war and suffered for it. But where one door closed, another opened. With Native American control of the regional economy weakened if not destroyed, merchants, farmers, and the governments of Upper Canada and the United States moved to create a regional economy on their terms. In the face of these pressures, remnants of the recently disbanded confederacy fought to control their own economic futures.

3 A Bordered Land

Although the Battle of Fallen Timbers and the American legion’s destruction of the Native American agricultural corridor retrospectively provide scholars a symbolic end to years of warfare, the future of the region seemed far from certain at the time. Military victory did not immediately translate into definitive regional control for the United States but rather created a power vacuum. Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron contend that by scrutinizing processes by which borderlands became bordered lands scholars can understand “the ­variegated nature of European imperialism and of indigenous reactions to colonial encroachments.”1 This rubric prompts an understanding of the role of the national state as a player in this process. The year between Fallen Timbers and the Treaty of Greenville presents a case study in a regional ­transformation from a borderland to a bordered land predicated on augmenting national-state authority in the region.2 Scholars often give short shrift to this transition, either Alderman and Aron build their rubric on the notion of borderlands first popularized by Eugene Bolton, who offered it as an alternative to Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis. Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in between in North American History,” AHR, vol. 14 (June 1999), 816; Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1935), 1–38; Herbert Eugene Bolton, The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921). For a useful historiography of borderlands in early American history, see Daniel H. Usner, Jr., “Borderlands,” in Daniel Vickers, ed., A Companion to Colonial America (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), 408–24; David J. Weber, “Turner, the Boltonians, and the Borderlands,” AHR, vol. 91 (Feb. 1986), 66–81. 2 Other close studies of the Treaty of Greenville consider the significance of national- state authority but secondarily. Andrew R. L. Cayton, “‘Noble Actors’ upon ‘the Theatre of Honour’: Power and Civility in the Treaty of Greenville,” in Andrew R. L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 235–69; Barbara Alice Mann, “The Greenville Treaty 1

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ending their studies by summarizing events between Fallen Timbers and the Treaty of Greenville or emphasizing the subsequent period leading to the War of 1812.3 While management of the bordered land would be continually contested, events leading to the treaty council offer insight into the contingent acceptance, as well as the ambiguous nature, of the bordered land that framed the economic and political context of the next fifteen years. Washington administrators hoped to define two layers of bordered lands in the Northwest, one between Indian country and settler territory would allow white Americans and Indians to continue their modes of economy separately, at least for the near future, and the other would demarcate an international boundary with Canada. Long-standing relationships between Indians and British traders and agents in the borderland held potential to undermine federal authority in the trans-Appalachian West. To overcome this obstacle, federal administrators established institutional influence in Indian country to create the appearance of power, even if practical authority was minimal. Although federal officials possessed a general sense of the shape the new West should take, how they might achieve their goals remained unfocused. In contrast, British officials in Upper Canada remained ambivalent about a borderland where Canadian peoples and Indians lived and worked together. They strove to preserve frayed Indian alliances even as commercial forces continued to erode the fur trade regime. Caught wedged between two settler areas, Ohio country Indian leaders debated how to reconcile destruction of the confederacy’s agricultural corridor with a desire to maintain control over precious resources in a newly redefined region.4 Nearly a year would pass before the Treaty of Greenville was signed. The ceremonies of the treaty council became a forum for airing grievances and building trust between familiar enemies, but events leading to the treaty, as well as debates at the council itself, served to define a new political economy of the region.5 The product of these efforts produced a bordered land retaining many vagaries associated with the previous borderland.6 of 1795: Pen-and-Ink Witchcraft in the Struggle for the Old Northwest,” in Bruce Johansen, ed., Enduring Legacies: Native American Treaties and Contemporary Controversies (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 137–201. 3 See for instance Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Wiley Sword, President Washington’s Indian War: The Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1790–1795 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985); Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007). 4 See especially John Sugden, Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 188–207; Harvey Lewis Carter, Life and Times of Little Turtle: First Sagamore of the Wabash (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 145–55; Isabel Thompson Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 1743–1807: Man of Two Worlds (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984), 511–19. 5 Cayton, “‘Noble Actors’ upon ‘the Theatre of Honour.’” 6 Some scholars emphasize the historical continuity of people moving back and forth across the Great Lakes basin. The characterization of the region as a permeable border is useful in understanding

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As smoke cleared from the fields at Fallen Timbers, American soldiers c­ ollected the dead and buried them in mass graves. When the Americans finished and removed to Fort Defiance before striking out toward the Miami Villages, men and women of the confederacy returned to collect their fallen, aware that Wayne’s men could not remain long in the region without additional supplies.7 There was plenty of time to assign blame for the defeat. Many pointed specifically to Alexander McKee for misleading them, but a consensus increasingly placed responsibility with British officials and, by extension, Britain itself.8 Since Britain organized Upper Canada, emerging market-oriented commercial forces wore at the reciprocal economic and political relationships that bound local Indian communities to the empire. The war amplified and accelerated this trend by exposing how thinly mutual fidelity was held by profiting traders.9 As the confederacy worked to amass as many warriors as possible at the Glaize to face the American army during the summer, the full weight of alliances suddenly came due. Not only did warriors threaten Indian villages that refused to send warriors, they also called upon their Upper Canadian trading partners – both British and French – to fulfill the military and political obligations that served as the root of their economic relationships.10 A war council held at a Shawnee village at the Glaize in June 1794 decreed “That every white man either English or French residing among or getting their livlihood [sic] by the Indian Trade or otherwise now within the limits of their Country shall immediately join the Indian Army to defend the territory which their mutual interest is so greatly concerned.”11 Some members of the merchant community responded to the plea for help as evidenced by the French-Canadian militia that fought alongside its Indian partners at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. In subsequent weeks, eyewitness accounts likewise placed both John Askin Jr. and Antoine Lasselle on the battlefield.12 Contemporary American observers depicted their how closely knit the region remained even as state power increased there. However, this model tends to diminish the influence of national state power in favor of the invisible hands of economy, society, culture, and ideology. John J. Bukowczyk, Nora Faires, David R. Smith, and Randy William Widdis, Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650–1990 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005). 7 September 2, 1794, in David Zeisberger, Diary of David Zeisberger: A Moravian Missionary among the Indians of Ohio, vol. 2, trans. and ed. Eugene F. Bliss (St. Clair Shores, MI: Scholarly Press, 1972), 372. 8 September 3, 1794, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 372; Larry L. Nelson, A Man of Distinction among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754–1799 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1999), 175–6. 9 White, Middle Ground, 472. 10 April 27, 1794, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 354. 11 June 16, 1794, Diary of an Officer J. C. in the Camp Opposed to Gen’l Wayne, William Claus Papers (hereafter Claus Papers), v. 6, MG 19/f 1, Library and Archives Canada (hereafter LAC), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 12 John Askin to John Askin, Jr., July 5, 1795, Milo Milton Quaife, ed., The John Askin Papers, vol. 1 (Detroit: Detroit Library Commission, 1928–31), 550; John Francis Hamtramck extract of a general order, October 15, 1794, Lasselle Papers, LL.

Map 2.  The West in 1795.

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presence as indicative of broader imperial support for the ­confederacy, but their choices represented more exception than rule. Few British merchants embraced much sense of obligation to their Native American customers even though they agreed with Shawnee arguments that they together shared a common interest in keeping the United States out of the West. In May 1794, prominent Detroit merchants James Baby (Jacques Baby de Rainville), Thomas Lasselle, and John Askin, among others, appealed to R.  G. England for authority to establish “Armed Trading Posts” for the defense of the “Indian Territory.” They proposed that subscribers would pay to garrison the posts, which would fall under the protection of the British government. Far from embracing unbridled support for the confederacy, their proposition sprang from self-interest, that is, excluding competitors, including Americans, while safeguarding their privileged status among the oligopoly of British traders. They sold their idea as a vehicle to provide a defensive perimeter for Upper Canada, but what they really wanted was imperial authority to remove competing British and French traders, whom they characterized as “Freebooters.”13 Although British officials denied their request, the merchants’ petition reveals that while the language of the middle ground remained, the changing economy in Upper Canada had fundamentally altered its meaning, at least for most white merchants. Merchants such as these embraced rather than resisted colonialism by wedding their interests with those of the empire to preserve and enhance their regulatory power over the economy to the sacrifice of community authority. Rumors floated throughout Upper Canada in midAugust that Detroit merchants had closed their shops to meet Wayne’s army at the Maumee River but few, in fact, did.14 Just as British officers shut the doors of Fort Miami, so too did British merchants fall short of their obligations in the wake of the June war council’s call to arms. If British traders wanted to maintain their connections to the western fur trade after Fallen Timbers, many alliances needed to be struck anew. Native Americans families who confronted the new era with the British government and its merchants faced limited options, and many turned to the empire for support. The magnificent agricultural corridor and trading centers at the Glaize and the Miami Villages had been replaced by devastated fields and two American forts, Fort Defiance and Fort Wayne. As early as the middle of September, some families returned to cultivate what few crops they could along the Auglaize and Maumee Rivers.15 The lateness of the season led most refugee families from the Glaize to form temporary refugee settlements From the Merchants of Detroit to R. G. England, May 23, 1794, in E. A., Cruikshank, ed., The Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, with Allied Documents Relating to His Administration of the Government of Upper Canada, vol. 2 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1923–6), 244. 14 August 21, 1794, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 370; Richard Cartwright to Isaac Todd, October 1, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 112. 15 Anthony Wayne to the Western Indians, September 12, 1794, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 80. 13

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across the region. Some communities relocated nearby to Sandusky, Detroit, and places farther west. One group of Delaware families who initially moved to Swan Creek later joined Delaware settlements along the White River while others explored an invitation from another Delaware community to live with them on the Illinois River.16 A contingent of Shawnee likewise looked to leave for the Mississippi River far from American settlements. Most families, however, chose to remain in the area to see how events would unfold. Detroit saw large numbers of Indian refugees arrive at the citadel, as did smaller British and French communities in Upper Canada. A large group of families moved down the Maumee River to Swan Creek for the winter. There they received aid from British agents and prepared to retreat beyond Detroit should Wayne’s legion decide to advance again. Located about half the distance between Fort Miami and Maumee Bay, new huts and wigwams lined the western shore of the river. By the middle of September, 2,556 Native Americans drew provisions from British stores there, including 355 Ottawa, 637 Shawnee, and 1,126 Delaware men, women, and children.17 On September 22, Matthew Elliot recommended that R. G. England, commander at Detroit, send six months worth of provisions to support three thousand Native Americans through the winter. His calculations excluded additional families that he anticipated would arrive later or pass through during subsequent months. An immediate order placed by Elliot called for 940 barrels of pork, 20 barrels of flour, 16 barrels of rice, 48 kegs of butter, 66 bags of corn, 550 pounds of gunpowder, and 8 boxes of ball.18 Two days later, a somewhat discouraged England informed Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe that Detroit also had experienced “an unusual consumption” of provisions by refugee villagers, a situation he expected to continue through the winter months. He warned Simcoe that his stores soon would be “exhausted if a speedy supply [was] not sent here, or authority given to purchase” additional flour and beef directly from local merchants.19 While writing this letter, England likely considered that other posts in the district that depended on Detroit for supplies, such as Sandusky and Michilimackinac, might also ask for assistance. Upper Canadian officials foresaw the looming crisis. As early as 1790, Alexander McKee conveyed to Sir John Johnson that “the Indians will no doubt turn their Eyes towards this Place [Detroit] for protection” if a large American force marched into their villages.20 The build-up to war already led Antoine Lasselle to Colonel McKee, October 23, 1794, Claus Papers; September 27, 1794, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 376. 17 Return of Indians Drawing Provisions at Swan Creek, September 15, 1794, Claus Papers, LAC. 18 Matthew Elliot notation attached to Return of Indians Drawing Provisions at Swan Creek, September 15, 1794, Claus Papers, LAC. 19 R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, September 17, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 96. 20 A. McKee to Sir John Johnson, June 13, 1790, series 1, lot 730, page 2, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District of North America (1756–) (hereafter SIANDNA), MG 19/f 35, LAC. 16

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the provincial government to supply additional provisions to the ­overflowing number of families at the Miami Villages, Maumee villages, and Fort Miami.21 After Fallen Timbers, R. G. England began to understand the depth of the need and requested that Simcoe send more provisions to Detroit than he previously calculated. Many top colonial officials simply had underestimated the scope of the refugee crisis and the pace at which the families consumed rations. Crisis bred opportunity. Aid to refugees relied on the local economy, and a swell in demand prompted merchants to cash in. Effective political organization of Upper Canada engendered increased interregional trade with Lower Canada, with each province responding relatively quickly to large shifts in the others’ markets by 1794. On the same day that R. G. England composed his letter to Simcoe regarding the plight of Detroit, Joseph Chew inquired from Montreal if a larger supply of provisions might be needed to support the Native American settlements near Fort Miami, likely referring to Swan Creek.22 If Upper Canada could not meet the new levels of demand, Lower Canada’s agricultural economy might benefit by selling crops up the St. Lawrence River. British agents forwarded what provisions they could amass. During the first three months after Fallen Timbers, British vessels delivered to Swan Creek 309 barrels of pork, 372 barrels and 72 bags of flour, and 1,017 bags of corn, along with quantities of peas, rice, and butter.23 The number of Indians receiving support remained high into the winter, with 2,203 Native Americans obtaining provisions at Swan Creek on December 4.24 Although this represented a decline from the 2,556 men, women, and children Elliot had counted in September, the lower number is likely attributable to men who left temporarily to supplement their diet by hunting.25 At Turtle Island, demand for provisions outstripped that post’s ready supply. Having “lent” from the stores at Detroit 78,957 rations from August 25 to December 24, officials there withdrew another 38,374 rations during the following three months.26 Ultimately, the success of British officers and Indian agents throughout Upper Canada rested on the desire of merchants and farmers to sell. If little produce existed or if better prices could be obtained elsewhere, agents and military commanders either struggled to fill requisitions or reluctantly paid large sums for produce they normally received at a bulk rate from contractors. R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, September 8, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 48. 22 Joseph Chew to Thomas Aston Coffin, September 22, 1794, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 105. 23 Provisions Landed at Swan Creek for the Indian Department from the 2nd of September to the 16th of November 1794, Claus Papers, LAC. 24 List of Nations Who Received Presents at Swan Creek, December 4, 1794, Claus Papers, LAC. 25 Thomas Smith to Col. [Alexander] McKee, October 28, 1794, Claus Papers, LAC. 26 Returns of Provisions Delivered for Indians at Turtle Island &c. from August 25, 1794 to December 24, 1794, Claus Papers, LAC. 21

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British efforts to alleviate the plight of refugees suffered the same litany of problems that had long plagued supply lines in both the western United States and Upper Canada. Swan Creek received uneven deliveries from September through November. On October 28, Captain Thomas Smith at Swan Creek notified McKee that provisions destined for the beleaguered settlement had landed at Turtle Island, another distribution point on the way from Detroit. The provisions “might as well be left at Detroit,” he sighed, leaving him at his “wit’s end as how to keep up in stock of corn at this place necessary for each Draw-day.” Not only were rivers too high for transport, but he lacked the men needed to navigate provisions upstream.27 Just over a week earlier, Smith had communicated that he had reduced the pork provisions issued – the “article most costly to Government” – to seven barrels per week, but faced angry families who demanded full rations.28 In addition to a subsistence crisis, the confederacy erupted into a vigorous political struggle especially as peace advocates began to gain supporters. Peace factions periodically appeared after Harmar’s defeat, but failed to gain enough momentum to overcome coalition-building activities at the time.29 As recently as the week before Fallen Timbers, Little Turtle too made an unsuccessful move for peace.30 After the legion’s victory, these voices grew in number and volume with several prominent war chiefs among them. Nations that joined the confederacy late and that did not live in the Maumee or Wabash valleys were among the first to argue for peace. As such, with the exception of Little Turtle (Miami), they did not represent the primary leadership of the confederacy.31 Blue Jacket (Shawnee), Buckongahelas (Delaware), Le Gris (Miami), and Egusheway (Ottawa) maintained their resolve to continue the war.32 By October 1794, some Wyandot chiefs noted that the bulk of the Shawnee and Ottawa supported continued hostilities while deep divisions characterized Delaware, Miami, and some Wyandot villages. Only Potawatomi and Ojibwa villages seemed to hold strong majorities in favor of peace.33 In the months that followed Fallen Timbers, confusion reigned more than certainty as fact and misinformation spread with equal effect. Shortly after the battle, rumors circulated that no Shawnee fought in the battle, raising ire in several communities.34 Such apprehension led communities to vacillate between war and peace.35 Missionary David Zeisberger noted that “among the Indians Thomas Smith to Col. [Alexander] McKee, October 28, 1794, Claus Papers, LAC. Thomas Smith to Alexander McKee, October 16, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant­Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 129. 29 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 113–4; Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 501. 30 Carter, Little Turtle, 134. 31 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 186. 32 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 187. 33 A Short Sketch of the Proceedings of the Council at the Big Rock, October 10, 1794, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 549. 34 September 3, 1794, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 372. 35 Thomas Smith to Alexander McKee, October 14, 1794, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 128. 27 28

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matters seem very confused, some wish to make peace, others not,” and that “there are general disturbances among the Indians and want of unity.”36 Seneca chief Joseph Brant added to the confusion. A mollifying agent before Fallen Timbers, Brant traveled through Upper Canada to Detroit and Swan Creek in September, urging Indians to regroup the confederacy and fight because the “war was contrived merely . . . to exterminate the Indians.”37 At the same time he told Canadians that he worked “to bring about a peace with the hostile Indians and the United States, on just and honorable terms.”38 Upper Canadian officials added their own mixed messages. At an October treaty at the Wyandot villages at Brownstown near Detroit, members of the Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, Miami, Ottawa, Ojibwa, Pottawatomi, Cherokee, and Seneca met with British officials including Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe, Alexander McKee, and Matthew Elliot. Brant pursued his agenda to continue the war, encouraging the confederacy to “reunite yourselves and do what is best for the general Interest of all Nations of our Colour.” Members of the confederacy alluded to their abandonment at Fort Miami, and so asked what they could expect from the British if they did not pursue peace. A moderately sanguine Wyandot chief, speaking for all, informed the lieutenant­governor that they would “be ready immediately as soon as” British “Warriors are ready to join us.”39 Simcoe’s orders precluded direct military support of the confederacy, especially as long as delegates from Britain and the United States continued negotiations toward a new trade treaty. While he could not jeopardize the treaty process, he wanted to avoid alienating allies who remained crucial to his plans for a defense of the region.40 Already he had seen some evidence that the protected status of British Canadians among Indians was in question as British traders occasionally found themselves a target of Native American resentment. Writing from Sandusky, Detroit merchant George McDougall reported that after some British merchants arrived, “Several threats & attempts in consequence have been made upon others & myself which has given me the justest cause for uneasiness.” He further qualified his situation, explaining that “­nothing but an ardent desire to satisfy my just creditors could have ever induced me to quit my peaceful habitation in Detroit to winter here” and live .

October 9 and 15, 1794, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 378. September 10, 1794, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 374; Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 512–4; Sugden, Blue Jacket, 183. 38 Israel Chapin to Joseph Brant, October 26, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 155. 39 Council at Brown’s Town, October 12, 1794, Pioneer Collections and Historical Collections (hereafter MPHC), vol. 25 (Lansing: Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan and Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1874/76–1912), 42, 44. 40 Duke of Portland to J. G. Simcoe, November 19, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 186. 36 37

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under the threat of “murder.”41 Other villages considered cutting off all trade with British agents. The resulting tense atmosphere occasionally produced violent encounters.42 Faced with few good options, Simcoe equivocated. His speech to the chiefs traced British relations with Native Americans since the end of the Seven Years War. In it, he promised “to protect and defend” them without committing any troops or promises of military action. He concluded his monologue by dismissing the Battle of Fallen Timbers as “trifling” and a “skirmish” involving only “part of your People.” He spun British policy, declaring his “immediate” willingness to send troops to support the Indians if Wayne had not “retreated.”43 If they had not already deduced it, by year’s end confederacy members clearly understood that the British never meant to provide them military support. Leaders called for a meeting in December to debate war and peace, signaling the ascension of peace advocates.44 In January, a delegation of Miami, Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Sauk met with Anthony Wayne at Fort Greenville, where they committed the communities they represented to a cessation of hostilities.45 The peace faction scored a great victory when Blue Jacket joined its ranks. In early February, he, along with another Shawnee chief and Delaware chief Tetepachsit, arrived at Fort Greenville to establish temporary conditions for a suspension of war until a formal treaty could be made, indicating that they spoke also for the Miami who lived at the Glaize.46 It is unclear whether Blue Jacket and Tetepachsit were spokesmen for a consensus already achieved at Detroit, where many of the most influential confederacy leaders had congregated, or if they acted independently to press reluctant confederacy members toward peace. When Blue Jacket’s party arrived at Fort Defiance on its way to Greenville on January 29, Mohawk reports from Detroit suggested George McDougall to R. G. England, January 11, 1795, Claus Papers, LAC. Thomas Duggan to Colonel McKee, January 9, 1796, Claus Papers, LAC. 43 His Excellency Lieutenant Governor Simcoe’s Reply to the Indian Nations Assembled at the Wyandot Village on the 13th Day of October, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 124. 44 Speech of the Confederate Indian Nations at the Glaize to Lieutenant Colonel England, Commanding at Detroit, n.d., Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 245. 45 Anthony Wayne to the Indians of Sandusky, January 1, 1795, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 253; Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, January 24, 1795, in Richard C. Knopf, ed., Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1960), 380; Anthony Wayne to the Secretary of War [extract], January 24, 1795, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 559–60; R. David Edmunds, Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 133. 46 Treaty with the Shawnee, Delaware and Miami, February 11, 1795, in Vine Deloria, Jr. and Raymond J. DeMallie, eds., Documents of American Indian Diplomacy: Treaties, Agreements, and Conventions, 1775–1979, vol. 2 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 1241–2; Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, February 12, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 384. 41 42

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that Indians there were still “much divided, some being for peace, others not.”47 In fact, when Blue Jacket stopped at Swan Creek on his way to Fort Greenville, he met a “strong party” against him.48 But support for war eroded with each passing day. In early February, a hawkish observer sneered that Indians were “­sneaking off to General Wayne every day.”49 By the end of the month, messengers from Detroit announced to Indian communities not only that “the nations had arranged together and decided to make peace with the States,” but also warned that any communities that opposed this decision, “namely, chiefs, captains, or deputies, would be looked upon as a foe of the Americans and friend of their father [Britain].”50 A month later, Tarhe (Wyandot), who had asked Wayne for permission to travel to their hunting grounds the previous November, went to Greenville to express commitment to establish a treaty, with others following after him.51 By early spring, word spread throughout the region that a treaty would be held at Fort Greenville during the upcoming summer. Just as Indians responded to the new American presence in the northern Ohio country, so too did British Upper Canadians. American installations provided economic outlets that functioned to blur national loyalties. Forts Industry, Defiance, and Wayne stood at the end of a network of roads Wayne constructed as a part of his campaign and consequently brought American ­consumers closer than ever to the western Upper Canada market. The main route connected Fort Defiance to Fort Washington and Cincinnati, and a ­secondary avenue connected Fort Wayne to Louisville by way of the Wabash River. Despite the massive military effort it took to create these pathways, impediments to the transportation of goods persisted in the postwar period. The most northern posts of Fort Wayne and Fort Defiance experienced supply shortfalls for many standard reasons including low river levels, inadequate roads, and occasional plundering. But officers along the supply line magnified these problems when they commandeered provisions intended for the northernmost forts.52 This pattern of conduct reflected an extension of behaviors that became widespread during the Revolution when continental commanders and state authorities did the same for their own soldiers, effectively assuring greater discipline in their own ranks at the expense of fellow officers.53 In the Richard C. Knopf, ed., “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance: The Journal of Joseph Gardner Andrews for the Year 1795,” Ohio History, vol. 66 (1957), 67; February 11, 1795, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 394. 48 Alexander McKee to R. G. England, January 27, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 276. 49 Sarah Ainse to Joseph Brant, February 5, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 287. 50 February 27, 1795, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 396. 51 Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, March 8, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 386. 52 See for instance, A. Marschalk to John Mills, May 10 and May 11, 1795, box 2, folder 10, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 53 E. Wayne Carp, To Starve the Army at Pleasure: Continental Army Administration and American Political Culture, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 58–9. 47

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West, this practice continued not only because of exigencies of war but also because of the limits of the western economy. Wayne and his successors forbade appropriating goods assigned to other forts, but commanders often disregarded orders or seized goods by marking them as damaged or lost. With little enforcement and redundancy in the system to prevent such corruption significant portions of orders could be missing by the time shipments arrived at forward posts. At Fort Defiance, where convoys made their way with great difficulty, supplies became so scarce that commissaries occasionally took the unusual step of requiring officers to present authorization from the commandant before issuing goods.54 To supplement the diets of their soldiery, commanders resorted to intensive foraging. After the bulk of the U.S. military withdrew to Greenville, soldiers at Fort Defiance scoured the decimated fields of the Glaize looking for remaining corn and vegetables. By January, parties of up to forty noncommissioned officers and privates traveled distances of more than ten miles from the fort with sleds to gather food.55 Soldier hunters periodically left for days at a time, pursuing deer, bear, turkey, and a variety of other game, while others fished along the banks of the river. When spring arrived, officers planted – or perhaps ordered the planting of – gardens, which provided fresh sustenance through the summer. In a unique example of industriousness, some officers made a failed attempt to extract salt from local salt springs.56 Native Americans provided food as well, bringing game as gifts designed to initiate peace and a new set of reciprocal bonds to replace deteriorating alliances with the British. Typically officers welcomed these gifts as trinkets. But at Fort Defiance, where provisions often ran low, gifts of wild game became main courses at dinners for officers and chiefs, at once representing diplomatic instrument and precious nourishment. In Detroit, British observers became keenly aware of conditions at forward American forts. In many respects, British merchants might more easily supply them from the Great Lakes than the United States could from the Ohio Valley. Prior to Forts Wayne and Defiance, British and French merchants traded regularly at the Miami Villages and the Glaize. Well-worn Indian trade routes linked Detroit and Niagara to the northern Ohio country. After the war, Upper Canadian merchants began to frequent the American forts, establishing connections with officers and soldiers alike. Isaac Williams, a trader at Sandusky who had been adopted by a Wyandot family, went to Fort Greenville with a delegation from that nation in November 1794 and convinced Wayne that he would “be true & faithful to the U.S.” by informing him about the confederacy’s councils with British officials and offering insights into Wyandot credibility.57 Thomas Hunt to Anthony Wayne, May 2, 1795, box 2, folder 10, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 55 January 15, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 65. 56 January 19–20 and 25–6, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 67–8. 57 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, November 12, 1794, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 362. 54

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Naturally, Williams’s actions perturbed Upper Canadian administrators, who wished him “apprehended” for “acting a dangerous part” by pursing peace.58 Although scholars have examined Loyalist migrations from the United States to Canada in the wake of the American Revolution, far less attention has been given to the group of Canadians that attached itself to the United States.59 On March 7, two French traders, Pierre Menard and François Kee, arrived at Fort Defiance, where they stayed for over half of a week meeting with officers.60 During the next several months, more traders arrived, among them Jacques (Coco) Lasselle, one of three sons belonging to a highly influential French-Canadian trading family who had long-standing trading relations with many bands of Native Americans, especially among the Miami and Shawnee. Jacques had been to Fort Defiance as early as January but returned as the trading season began anew.61 Francis Vigo, who already had business ties to the Ohio Valley, expanded his business to include the military. By the summer of 1795, he, along with Antoine Lasselle, Hyacinth Lasselle, Jacques Lasselle, and Abraham Williams (who also traded with Wyandot communities) became so integrated into the American supply network that their names appear as participants for the United States in the Treaty of Greenville.62 In subsequent years, strong webs of commerce linked Vigo to several businesses in Philadelphia and Baltimore in addition to trade he conducted in Detroit and along the Mississippi River.63 As much as improving commercial opportunities between Upper Canadian merchants and American forts held potential for augmenting the economy, it troubled British leaders who both feared losing control of the region and R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, December 13, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 219. 59 See for instance, Wallace Brown, The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York: William Morrow, 1969); William H. Nelson, The American Tory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961); Janet Ajzenstat and Peter J. Smith, eds., Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory, or Republican? (Carleton University Press, 1995); Alan Taylor, “The Late Loyalists: Northern Reflections on the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 27 (Spring 2007), 1–34; Jane Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987). Nora Faires offers an exception to this trend by characterizing the movement of people in the Lakes region during this period as one of “mingling.” Nora Faires “Leaving the ‘Land of the Second Chance’: Migration from Ontario to the Upper Midwest in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in John J. Bukowczyk, Nora Faires, David R. Smith, and Randy William Widdis, eds., Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650–1990 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 78–119. 60 March 7, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 76–7. 61 April 30, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 85; Sugden, Blue Jacket, 90. 62 John Askin to Francis Vigo, July 2, 1795, Askin Papers, 1: 549. 63 Account of Francis Vigo with Henry Toland, September 6, 1792, Account of Francis Vigo with Manuel de Lisa, July 1796, Account of Francis Vigo with Edward Collins & Co., November 1796, and Account of Francis Vigo with Ghesquiere & Holmes, September 1798, box 2, folder 5, Francis Vigo Papers, IHS. 58

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desperately needed food supplies. By May, Edmund Burke, the vicar general of Detroit, became incensed by supposedly loyal traders working with a perceived enemy and voiced his concern to high-ranking officials. Burke railed against traders at River Raisin who appeared more inclined to make a profit than pursue the cause of empire. He called for the arrest of the entire Lasselle family, Francis Lafontaine, George McDougall, Isaac Williams, and Francois Navarre, among others, whom he characterized as threats to the economic and political solvency of Upper Canada.64 In compiling his list of “traitors,” Burke only scratched the surface of a larger phenomenon. Large numbers of Upper Canadians reached out to the new market of consumers, goods, and ideas emanating from the south.65 Loyalty to the empire remained weaker in the borderland than that to the federal government in the Ohio Valley. While members of the military and governmental institutions displayed nationalist impulses for Britain and the crown, few inhabitants of Upper Canada shared those sentiments, whether Loyalist refugees from the United States, recent British and Scottish emigrants, or French traders. The organization of the province of Upper Canada paired with aggressive American expansionism amplified the strategic importance of loyalty as a security concern. When loyalty seemed to follow trade rather than the flag, British officials naturally were concerned. Wayne’s implicit sanction of British merchants traveling to and operating out of American installations led critics to conclude that Britain was losing control of the borderland.66 Heightening anxieties during the winter of 1794–5 were rumors that a substantial number of British Canadians would desert to the Americans.67 Merchants who had been integral pieces in the British regional trade and diplomatic network now seemed to privilege their own material interests over imperial policy. By the end of March, Alexander McKee added his voice to the choir opposing trade from Detroit to American posts. Little evidence exists to suggest that this trade involved guns and ammunition, but McKee hyperbolized that if war erupted between the rivals, British traders might offer them to the American military. McKee also understood that influence with Indians in the borderland depended upon effectively balancing diplomacy and trade, which could be undermined if British and French traders convinced Native American communities to ally with the United States.68 Prior to the summer of 1794, McKee confidently characterized Americans as a common enemy of Britain and the confederacy. However, as British traders went “openly to their Enemies [sic] Forts without molestation and with perfect impunity,” McKee wondered how Edmund Burke to E. B. Littlehales, May 27, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 22. 65 Errington, The Lion, the Eagle and Upper Canada, 38–40. 66 Edmund Burke to E. B. Littlehales, June 17, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 27. 67 George McDougall to R. G. England, January 11, 1795, Claus Papers, LAC. 68 Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 36. 64

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it might be possible to convince Indians that the two were not allied against the former confederacy.69 By curbing transnational trade in the borderland, McKee posited, both Indian and British interests could best be met. In the end, officials failed to inhibit this trade in large measure because the British military lacked enough resources to police the region. Commandant of Detroit Richard G. England vented “how very difficult an undertaking . . . it is when the Frontier is so very extensive.”70 At Fort Miami, the commander of the British forces attempted to stop traders passing up-river to Fort Defiance and Fort Wayne, only to have them circumvent the British installation altogether. Although evidence such as this suggests that the British experienced diminishing capacity to police the region, it more accurately reflects an augmenting imperial presence and a shifting body of expectations among government agents that the empire rather than communities discipline transgressors. Prior to Fallen Timbers, the British imperial state held little cause to police Indian country. The new American presence in the region transformed interpretations of the borderland as a space, prompting British authorities to interject new resources and mechanisms for regulating the movement and behavior of British subjects there. In this context, Dorchester, Simcoe, and others experimented with their use of imperial power during a liminal moment as the borderland transitioned toward becoming a bordered land. At the same time, British control of forts south of the Great Lakes such as Niagara, Miami, Detroit, and Michilimackinac, remained in doubt. When news arrived in May 1795 that plenipotentiaries of the United States and Britain had agreed to terms of a treaty, R. G. England lamented the institutional limits of his authority, observing that if traders succeeded in getting their merchandise beyond Fort Miami, “it is then out of our reach.”71 That very day, four boats bound for Detroit loaded with peltry and tobacco made a stopover at Fort Defiance to sell wares. Only a few days earlier, the vessels had pulled up to Fort Wayne for the same purpose.72 British businessmen simply found trade with Americans too lucrative to abandon. Even as British actions moved the region toward a bordered land, alliances with Indians continued, suggesting that critical features of the borderland would not fade easily. Maintenance of those relationships meant demonstrating steady support for Indian communities. As the summer of 1795 began, the King’s Stores regularly sent provisions to Indian refugees even as the ­military and Indian agency struggled with supply problems. Following general instructions, R. G. England worked to meet Native American needs, “though the J. G. Simcoe to the Duke of Portland, March 17, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 329. 70 R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, May 27, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 22. 71 R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, May 27, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 24; March 12, 1795 and May 27, 1795, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 398, 407. 72 May 27 and 28, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 163–4. 69

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requisition approved of by Your Excellency [Simcoe] has been considerably exceeded.” In June, England informed Lieutenant Governor Simcoe that stores of corn, flour, and peas at Detroit had become “much drained,” and one month later they were, for practical purposes, “exhausted.”73 The effort to sustain Native American families living at Swan Creek, River Raisin, and other subordinate posts since the autumn had drawn heavily on the region’s suppliers and farmers. The “enormous demand” had left the King’s Store at Detroit without “a barrel of flour, a bushel of corn, and only two hundred and fifty barrels of pork, with a small quantity of peas and rice.” England noted that almost all the flour and corn that Detroit could produce had been purchased at high prices and that if a fresh supply did not arrive soon, “the Garrison may shortly be reduced to some difficulties if not distress.” Moreover, because of information he received from Fort Niagara, he felt he had “no reason to flatter” himself that flour, corn, or pork could be acquired from the failing stores at Fort Erie or even Kingston. To make matters worse, England forecast that the autumn harvest likely would not alleviate their woes because “the crops do not promise to be productive.”74 Bad weather and infestations of insects throughout the year exacerbated Upper Canadian supply problems. A particularly cold winter killed droves of cattle in the Detroit area.75 Farmers watched helplessly as an arid summer, a wet autumn, and an infestation of Hessian flies diminished wheat crops in Detroit, Kingston, and Niagara.76 Making matters worse, Lower Canada and Britain also experienced crop shortfalls.77 Farmers and merchants in both provinces sold what crops they had – often to civilian and military agents – as demand sent prices steadily rising throughout the year. Crops of wheat and corn were better than predicted, but officials did not learn this until November, meaning that pessimistic outlooks prevailed through the summer.78 As autumn approached, England reported little improvement to his situation. Military agents had purchased all readily available flour and corn in the Detroit area, yet for two weeks he had been unable to send provisions to Swan Creek in support of fifty-four hundred Native American men, women, and children still residing there. Although neither his garrison nor the families at Swan Creek R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, June 18, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 29. 74 R. G. England to E. B. Littlehales, July 10, 1795, and R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, July 13, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 41, 44. 75 February 18, 1795, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 395. 76 Richard Cartwright to J. G. Simcoe, October 20, 1795, James Farquharson to John Smith, October 22, 1795, and J. G Simcoe to Lord Dorchester, November 3, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 107, 109, 120. 77 Lord Dorchester to J. G. Simcoe, September 17, 1795, and Duke of Northumberland to J.  G. Simcoe, November 6, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 94, 129. 78 Thomas Reynolds to R. G. England, November 6, 1795, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 130. 73

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found themselves in immediate danger, England warned that their situation would likely deteriorate because he possessed only eighteen days worth of flour for his troops alone.79 When autumn arrived, high demand led farmers and merchants to offer inflated prices for crops they managed to harvest or otherwise obtain. But high prices hurt consumers, who began to call for the construction of public granaries.80 To reduce their expenses, military leaders recommended waiting as long as possible to purchase wheat, hoping that more might appear on the market and depress prices.81 Hoping to ease supply problems, Simcoe requested that Lord Dorchester, the governor of Canada, issue an embargo against importing Upper Canadian flour, wheat, and other grains into Lower Canada. Dorchester, confronting similar supply problems, denied the request. Instead, he insinuated that Simcoe should police trade in the borderland “to prevent any Grain or Flour from being transported from thence into the Territory of the United States.”82 The borderland, however, remained beyond Simcoe’s control. Merchants exploited the power vacuum by pursuing dubious land purchases from Indians in the Ohio country. Acquiescing chiefs passed land to speculators during the winter and spring of 1795 for many reasons. Some signed land away out of avarice or a desire to alleviate the depressed situation of their people; others did so because they planned to emigrate west or believed they were renewing their diplomatic relationship with the empire. To facilitate the transfer, dishonest brokers provided alcohol or negotiated with individuals who lacked authority to relinquish land rights. “Land-jobbing seems to be the rage at present,” groused a hamstrung Richard England in July 1795.83 British officials at all levels had long attempted to regulate land sales by limiting private transactions with Native Americans, but felt powerless to prevent or regulate land negotiations occurring outside the territory directly under their control. Alexander McKee complained about several purchases, but highlighted one made by “Messrs. McNiff, Askwith, Kenzie, and Doddemead” for a large tract on the banks of the Maumee River and an island near Roche de Bout.84 Some of the Baubees (Babys), a wealthy trading family from Detroit, reportedly purchased large tracts of land along the River Raisin.85 And in perhaps the most R. G. England to E. B. Littlehales, August 9, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 58. 80 Richard Cartwright to J. G. Simcoe, October 20, 1795, and R. Dodgeson to E. B. Littlehales, October 29, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 107, 115. 81 Thomas Reynolds to R. G. England, November 6, 1795, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 130. 82 Lord Dorchester to J. G. Simcoe, December 3, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 154. 83 R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, July 13, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 44. 84 R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, June 13, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 26. 85 Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, September 20, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 461. 79

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audacious scheme, a group of seven Detroit merchants, including John Askin and his son along with Vermonters Ebenezer Allen and Charles Whitney and Philadelphian Robert Randall, attempted to orchestrate and gain congressional approval for a purchase of the whole of the lower peninsula of Michigan. Their ploy failed and Congress ordered Randall and Whitney arrested.86 Speculators particularly sought fertile land along navigable rivers. Before the war, British and French-Canadian traders watched Native American women cultivate riparian fields located along primary trade routes linking the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River. Following the war, some speculators hoped that they might gain confirmation of land claims from the new American regime if they could acquire proof of land cessions. With this strategy in mind, John Askin partnered with his son and Montreal merchant Alexander Henry to obtain “what Tracts of Land he [could] of the Indian Nation on the Miamis River and River au Huron.”87 Given the pressure for land from Canadians, some Indians expected that they would “lose their land any way, whether the States win or not, either through them or the English.”88 Undeterred by military set-back or Upper Canadians’ shifting motivations, members of the confederacy sought to define the evolving borderland in their own terms. Through June and July of 1795, delegations of Indians congregated separately in Detroit, Swan Creek, Sandusky, or other communities before departing for the treaty council at Fort Greenville. Their journeys carried them along roads hewn by Wayne’s troops, which generally were superimposed upon established Indian trails. On their way, many delegations stopped at American forts where they conducted ceremonies intended to provide a foundation for peace. Egushaway, an Ottawa chief, exemplified this aim when he gave a speech to officers at Fort Defiance and smoked a calumet with officers in late June before departing for Greenville.89 A month later, Shawnee chief Red Pole, along with Delaware chiefs, invited select officers at the same fort to attend a dance taking place at their nearby camp.90 Although American commandants had engaged in similar ritualized exchanges since Blue Jacket’s arrival in January, the approaching treaty intensified their frequency.91 Native Americans and American officers inaugurated new bodies of relationships through subtlety as well as custom. Native American men and women who passed through American forts occasionally supplied commanders with intelligence regarding British movements. Fort officers invited chiefs to dine with them when visiting or passing through the area. In one instance, several Partnership for Purchase of Michigan Peninsula, Askin Papers, 1: 568–72; Account of a Plot for Obtaining the Lower Peninsula of Michigan from the United States in 1795, MPHC, 8: 406–10; U. S. House Journal, 4th Cong., 1st sess., December 28, 1795, 389–90. 87 Agreement Concerning Land Speculation, May 27, 1795, Askin Papers, 1: 543. 88 September 22, 1794, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 376. 89 June 27, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 171. 90 July 21 and August 4, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 170, 181. 91 January 29 and 31, 1795, and February 25 and 27, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 67, 79. 86

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officers worked with seventy Shawnee men and women to tap nearly 600 maple trees in a late season push to make maple sugar.92 In these small but meaningful moments, fort officers and Indian chiefs began to mend wounds and facilitated a grander postwar peace. This was no easy task when emotions still smoldered under the surface. But officers and Indian elders adroitly navigated the tricky terrain. When Captain Reed, a Shawnee chief, drunkenly attempted to burn down Fort Defiance, Major Hunt and Indian men accompanying Reed quelled the situation. Hunt stumbled into an awkward moment when he and some other officers showed Miami chief Little Turtle a small garden they planted. Little Turtle assumed “a melancholy air” and pointing out that “the land was once his own property.”93 As evidence of a new system of alliances, Native Americans approached commanders for material aid, just as they did the British. Families returning from their winter hunting grounds requested piecemeal provisions and supplies from American commanders.94 Scores of others made their way to meet Anthony Wayne at Fort Greenville, who issued larger gifts, including tents, blankets, strouding, jackets, brass kettles, axes, and knives, as well as smaller tokens such as ribbons, thread, needles, buttons, handkerchiefs, and various combs.95 This support helped sustain communities devastated by the war while also mimicking patterns of aid and reciprocity that characterized the middle ground for decades. When compared to Upper Canadian support to dislocated tribes, U.S. offerings appear meager. The federal government simply did not view the humanitarian crisis as its concern. The purpose of federal involvement in the conflict had been to undermine the confederacy’s economy and obtain territory. Once accomplished, the Washington administration viewed extensive charitable efforts as counterproductive and expensive. In contrast to British practice, Washington hoped to limit U.S. paternalism to treaty gift giving and annual presents.96 Indian communities provided little incentive to alter this policy as they chose not to seek large-scale aid from federal agents. After years of bitter fighting with Kentuckians and the U.S. military, most Indians wanted to distance themselves from white American settlements. Peace might be achieved, At the end of the season, each of eight officers received twenty pounds of maple sugar. It is unclear how much maple sugar the Shawnees took with them. March 3 and 17, 1795, and April 16, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 76, 78, 84. 93 June 2, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 167. 94 April 8, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 83. 95 The Torrence Papers at the Cincinnati Historical Society Library contain numerous quartermaster requisitions, primarily submitted at Fort Greenville, on behalf of Native American ­delegations. See especially boxes 46 and 47, Torrence Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society Library, Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal (hereafter CHS), Cincinnati, Ohio. 96 George Washington to Edmund Pendleton, January 22, 1795, in John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799, vol. 34 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970; rpt. 1940), 99–100. 92

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but few expected strong reciprocal alliances akin to those constructed initially with the French and less successfully with the British. Rather Ohio country whites and Indians shared a desire to maintain a regional political geography defined by race as much as economy and political sovereignty. The federal government sought to codify that geography in the upcoming treaty. Indians naturally had a vested interest in the treaty, but the roads to Fort Greenville carried more than Native American delegations. Land speculators made the journey with the goal of preserving newly acquired land. Some brought their claims, hoping Anthony Wayne would certify land purchases. Other sought to influence treaty proceedings to protect Indians’ sovereignty and thereby prevent the United States from interfering in land cessions. John Askin advised his son in this way, ordering him “to use your Utmost Influence . . . to Endeavor that the first article of the Treaty between them [Native Americans] and the Americans Should be that they are the sole Masters of the Lands, to dispose of them as they think fit without any restraint Whatsoever.”97 At Greenville speculators received a cold reception. As parties began to arrive at the fort, Wayne ordered his “officers to keep a watchful eye upon all suspicious persons, and particularly any who may attempt to come into the cantonment from any of the British posts or garrisons.”98 Whether speculators traveled alone or by invitation of a tribal delegation, Wayne viewed so-called British and French advisers as a challenge to American authority and influence at the council. Commandants at northern forts did not try to prevent such individuals from proceeding to Greenville, but John Askin, Jr. received “a cool reception” compared to his fellow Ojibwa and Ottawa companions when he passed through Fort Defiance. While there George McDougall, an Upper Canadian merchant working with the Americans, threatened to reveal Askin as a member of the Canadian militia who fought at Fallen Timbers. Askin safely left Fort Defiance but Wayne arrested and imprisoned him at Fort Jefferson after soldiers intercepted a letter addressed from his father with instructions on how to advise the confederacy and influence the treaty.99 Although intelligence helped identify the young Askin’s motives, Wayne did not expend significant resources ferreting out land-jobbers. Hence, there was “reason to suspect,” as officers generally believed, that a handful of “emmissaries” surreptitiously made it into the council. Their presence however was moot; reports following the treaty led British administrators to conclude that land speculators returned “severely disappointed . . . and their purchases of course set aside.”100

Mission of John Askin, Jr. to Greenville, July 5, 1795, Askin Papers, 1: 550. July 8, 1795, in James Elliot, The Poetical and Miscellaneous Works of James Elliot, Citizen of Guilford, Vermont, and Late a Noncommissioned Officer in the Legion of the United States (Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, 1976; rpt. 1798), 142. 99 John Askin, Jr. to R. G. England, August 19, 1795, Askin Papers, 1: 561. 100 R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, September 8, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 92. 97 98

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Wayne did not make a stronger effort to dissuade British and French agents from coming to Fort Greenville because, much like the British, the American military could not effectively police the borderland. Instead, Wayne attempted to orchestrate the proceedings at the Treaty of Greenville to create an illusion of U.S. military strength in the West. In January, several Indian deputations asked him to hold the treaty at the Miami Villages, “where the hatchet was first raised, & where they wished to bury it.” But Wayne believed that American military forces would appear weak so far from the Ohio Valley. The vulnerability of convoys moving along roads to the Miami Villages would have placed at risk the main body of his troops at Fort Wayne. If the U.S. military seemed enfeebled, Wayne speculated, members of the northern confederacy might decide to renew war, and exploit his exposed position by striking quickly. Wayne therefore designated Fort Greenville the treaty site where a relatively small number of troops might yet, as he wrote, “inspire the Savages with respect for our force.” His troops also would be half the distance from the Ohio River compared to the Miami Villages. That the expense of hosting the treaty would be a fraction of one held at the Miami Villages made Fort Greenville a wise political decision.101 Economy appealed to a presidential administration already self-conscious about escalating expenditures associated with the conflict; war might have been expensive, but there seemed little reason peace should be. To that end the Wayne spent much of the spring improving communication between posts and positioning troops to display a compelling, costeffective show of force. A façade of strength was all Wayne could practically muster. Since the close of the offensive, few soldiers were willing to reenlist at the expiration of their terms. Veterans found private employment appealing for both the lighter labor regimen and higher wages.102 As in Upper Canada, scarcity evoked market impulses in the Ohio Valley as merchants and commercial husbandmen hired workers in expectation of elevated prices as federal spending surged anew.103 The labor market likewise made use of militia expensive, encouraging Wayne to consider their use a last resort.104 Rather than call for a draft in the West, the military raised 500 reinforcements in eastern states and marched them into the region.105 Even as the treaty council approached, potential for renewed war remained palpable. Washington and Pickering warned Wayne not to forget “the treachery Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, January 24, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 380, 381 (original emphasis). 102 Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, March 8, 1795 and April 7, 1795, and Timothy Pickering to Anthony Wayne, June 29, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 388–9, 392, 430. 103 Anthony Wayne to Col. Kilpatrick, May 14, 1795, box 2, folder 10, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 104 Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, March 8, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 388. 105 Timothy Pickering to Anthony Wayne, May 23, 1795, May 30, 1795, and June 27, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 420, 421, 428. 101

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of Pontiac” but major general needed no such reminder as skirmishes with Indians persisted in the countryside.106 Though the frequency of the violence abated during the winter months, the property war continued. Warriors attacked a merchant’s convoy not far from Fort Hamilton, even as a delegation of Shawnees and Delawares attempted to make peace at Fort Greenville in February.107 In early June, Indians attacked a series of boats on the Ohio River only weeks before the beginning of the treaty council.108 Joseph Brant also sustained his tour, working the summer months, using the memory of settler violence upon their communities to persuade Delaware men to raise the hatchet again.109 As early as February, rumors of impending Indian attacks spread like wildfire throughout Kentucky, sparking panics in isolated settlements.110 As they had done in previous years, Kentuckians asked Governor Isaac Shelby to “Extend the Friendly Arm of Government to” protect them from their “Defenceless Situation.”111 Proprietors of salt licks and the owner of Bourbon Furnace likewise sought state protection of their investments.112 Petitioners stressed dangers to the local economy claiming “extravagant” wages were “not sufficient to keep” settlers from leaving.113 The waves of Indian violence imagined by settlers never materialized. Instead, white Ohio Valley residents used alarms as justification to perpetrate atrocities against Indians. Cincinnatians set the tone for the year following Fallen Timbers by attacking a group of Choctaw returning home in September 1794 after having fought alongside Wayne’s troops.114 From Illinois to the Ohio country, Kentuckians launched raids into Indian country, destroying settlements and indiscriminately killing Indians who had the misfortune to cross their paths.115 A “clergyman of the name of Finley, and a Mr. Massey” killed a number of Indians who were “peaceably following their occupation of Timothy Pickering to Anthony Wayne, May 7, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 413. Thomas Swaine to Anthony Bartlette, February 27, 1795, Thomas Swaine Folder, FHS. 108 General Wayne to Governor St. Clair, June 5, 1795, in William Henry Smith, ed., The St. Clair Papers: The Life and Public Service of Arthur St. Clair, vol. 2 (Cincinnati: Robert Clark, 1882), 375. 109 November 2, 1794, June 15, 1795, and August 16, 1795, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 381, 409, 415–6. 110 Samuel Wells to Isaac Shelby, February 5, 1795, and Robert Breckinridge to Isaac Shelby, February 7, 1795, Isaac Shelby Papers, FHS. 111 Unsigned letter to Isaac Shelby, February 15, 1795, Isaac Shelby Papers, FHS. 112 Henry Lee to Isaac Shelby, March 5, 1795, and The Owner of Bourbon Furnace and Inhabitants of Slate Creek to Isaac Shelby, March 6, 1795, Isaac Shelby Papers, FHS. 113 Turner Richardson to Isaac Shelby, June 4, 1795, and Letter to Isaac Shelby, February 15, 1795, Isaac Shelby Papers, FHS. 114 John H. Buell to Quartermaster, September 1, 1794, box 46, Torrence Papers, CHS; Secretary Sargent to Judge McMillan, September 8, 1794, St. Clair Papers, 2: 328; R. Douglas Hurt, The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720–1830 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 141. 115 Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, June 17, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 427; General Wayne to Governor St. Clair, June 5, 1795, St. Clair Papers, 2: 374–5. 106 107

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hunting.” When the raiding party returned to Limestone, they sold the ­plunder “publicly” and “in open daylight.”116 In another case, white settlers killed two Potawatomi men held in custody of a sheriff who did nothing to stop the murders.117 Although ample evidence was presented to a grand jury against the criminals, “no bill was found against them.”118 Such violence might occur anywhere settlers encountered Indians, but Kentuckians had become notoriously impetuous. Shortly after agreeing to preliminary articles for peace with the Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami in February, Wayne issued an order forbidding Kentuckians from crossing the Ohio “with hostile intentions.”119 As word of settler violence spread, Wayne warned Ohio territorial governor Arthur St. Clair that “unless some effectual measures are adopted to prevent predatory parties from Kentucky crossing the Ohio, the inhabitants of the Territory, over which you preside, will hold their lives and property by a very precious tenure.”120 St. Clair in turn implored Governor Shelby to prevent Kentuckians from “entering this Territory in arms, and disturbing the peace” but, as he told Wayne, he did “not expect any effect therefrom.”121 “Parties from Kentucky . . . with predatory designs against the Indians,” St. Clair observed, “can not be prevented by any thing I can do.… All that can be done is to punish them after the act, if they can be apprehended.”122 Wayne or St. Clair could have mobilized militia to patrol the river, but neither advised they do so. Kentuckians had become, as one witness noted, “cruel and bloody minded,” especially as the treaty approached.123 By June, Wayne could see that unbridled Kentuckians threatened the peace.124 For a moment, the Jay Treaty also threatened to undermine peace in the West. As a divided Senate debated the controversial treaty with Britain, the Washington administration pressed for a “speedy conclusion” to the Indian treaty. If the Senate failed to ratify the accord, Secretary of War Timothy Pickering forecast, the United States “may well expect a renewal of the endeavours of the British Agents in Canada, and with redoubled zeal to prevent a pacification [sic] with the Indians.”125 Regardless of the outcome of the Jay Treaty, a successful treaty appeared unlikely to Wayne if Kentucky militias continued desultory attacks on Indian parties and communities. One reason that the major general preferred regular troops over militia at Greenville was because the latter were “undisciplined” Governor St. Clair to Governor Shelby, June 20, 1795, St. Clair Papers, 2: 386. Governor St. Clair to Judge Turner, May 25, 1795, St. Clair Papers, 2: 351. 118 Governor St. Clair to the Secretary of State, n.d., 1796, St. Clair Papers, 2: 396. 119 Proclamation, St. Clair Papers, 2: 343fn1. 120 General Wayne to Governor St. Clair, June 5, 1795, St. Clair Papers, 2: 375. 121 Governor St. Clair to Governor Shelby, June 20, 1795, and Governor St. Clair to General Wayne, June 30, 1795, St. Clair Papers, 2: 386, 387. 122 Governor St. Clair to General Wayne, June 11, 1795, St. Clair Papers, 2: 376. 123 June 24, 1795, Diary Kept by David Barrow of his Travels thru Kentucky in 1795, KHS. 124 General Wayne to Governor St. Clair, June 5, 1795, St. Clair Papers, 2: 374. 125 Timothy Pickering to Anthony Wayne, June 17, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 424. 116 117

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and their “passions” might “disturb or frustrate the pending treaty.”126 In early June, President Washington authorized Kentucky to mobilize as many as 320 men for a tour of sixty days.127 During the first week in July, with Indian delegations arriving at Fort Greenville, St. Clair notified the Kentucky militia that the previous call for militia to protect the frontier was to be discontinued July 15. Shortly thereafter he authorized a second detachment of 500 mounted volunteers to be raised in Kentucky ostensibly “for the purpose of scourging the Hostile Indians on the head of the Wabash.”128 It might have been that the administration sought to create another layer of defense on the eve of the treaty, but if so, discontinuing frontier protections seems misguided. If an offensive truly were in the works, it seems peculiar that residents north of the Ohio River were not included in the order. Since the spring, the pattern there tended to be militia demobilization.129 Instead, it is likely that the orders were meant to distract Kentuckians from organizing forays into Indian country that might have disrupted the treaty. What Kentuckians remained mobilized found themselves under the authority of the federal government and isolated at Fort Washington for the duration of the council.130 As federal officials wrangled with impetuous Kentuckians, tribal delegations made their way to Fort Greenville. On June 16, a considerable number of Delaware, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Eel River Indians arrived first and met with Wayne. Wayne stipulated that “the basis of the now pending treaty” would include the land cession of the Treaty of Fort Harmar, and he described that territory using Thomas Hutchins’s “A New Map of the Western Parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina” (1778).131 As the days passed, additional parties of Potawatomi, Delaware, Miami, and others reached Greenville, but these envoys represented communities who had granted them marginal negotiating authority. Because decision making in Indian communities required consensus, spokesmen could maneuver only slightly without diverging from the powers given them.132 Moreover, because the United States intended to construct an umbrella treaty that included all Indians who potentially could claim territory in the Ohio country, the various nations would need Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, April 7, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 392. Harry Innes, Benjamin Logan, and Isaac Shelby to the Lieutenant of Jefferson County, June 11, 1795, folder 8, Alexander Scott Bullitt Correspondence, 1793–1800, Bullitt Family Papers, Oxmoor Collection, FHS. 128 Charles Scott, Harry Innes, John Brown, and Benjamin Logan to the Commanding Officer at Jefferson County, July 6, 1795, folder 8, Alexander Scott Bullitt Correspondence, FHS. 129 Governor St. Clair to Colonel Sproat, April 21, 1795, St. Clair Papers, 2: 340. 130 Charles Scott, Harry Innes, John Brown, and Benjamin Logan to The Commanding Officer at Jefferson County, July 6, 1795, folder 8, Alexander Scott Bullitt Correspondence, FHS. 131 Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, May 15, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 417; Emerson D. Fite and Archibald Freeman, comps. and eds., A Book of Old Maps: Delineating American History from the Earliest Days down to the Close of the Revolutionary War (New York: Dover Publications, 1969; rpt. 1929), 279. 132 Mann, “The Greenville Treaty of 1795,” 182–3. 126 127

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to reach a consensus that did not violate directions prescribed to them by their communities. Such expectations meant that most of the nations would need to agree on core terms of the treaty prior to arriving at the council. That the tribes acquiesced to the land cessions stipulated in the Treaty of Fort Harmar suggests that many of them discussed this outcome and authorized the cession, if reluctantly. For several months prior to the treaty, a flurry of councils occupied many members of the confederacy with runners keeping communities in the area abreast of proceedings.133 These councils began the process of sorting through key issues expected to be raised at the treaty council, a dialogue that continued through the commencement of negotiations.134 The Washington administration provided Wayne with instructions as well. Although the United States held the upper hand by virtue of their military victory, an amicable settlement could only be achieved through carefully managed proceedings. Even before Fallen Timbers, administration officials sensed that, by including a wide array of Indian communities, this treaty might create a precedent for future agreements. In April 1794, Secretary of War Henry Knox sent Wayne an initial outline of treaty instructions, the most central component of which narrowly focused on the primary object of the war: to obtain the terms stipulated under the Treaty of Fort Harmar in 1789. Beyond that, the instructions provided only broad goals, giving Wayne flexibility to negotiate for more land if possible. Although Secretary of War Henry Knox initially wanted separate treaties in order to dispel “as much as possible . . . the idea of an union or general confederacy of all the tribes,” he later reconsidered, authorizing instead a composite treaty. It would, he hoped, “save much time and trouble and prevent tedious and perhaps inconvenient altercations among themselves [Indians] about their boundaries, which are often vague.”135 The treaty was only part of what American officials hoped to achieve. As Andrew Cayton argues, Anthony Wayne, his superiors, and Native American leaders wanted to use the Treaty of Greenville as an elaborate ceremony designed to engender “an atmosphere of mutual respect and friendship” and “traditional fictive relationships” that would bind Indians to the republic.136 But the United States also intended to use its coercive power to install in Indian country a unique blend of market forces and paternalistic benevolence. On the one hand the United States sought to determine ownership of the land by having the tribes acknowledge the preemptive right of the United States See for instance references to “strange Indians” and “rumors” on May 29, June 6, and June 19, 1795, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 408, 409, 411. 134 July 13, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, with the tribes of Indians called the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanese, Ottawas, Chippewas, Pattawatamies, Miamies, Eel River, Kickapoos, Piankeshaws, and Kaskaskias, begun at Greenville, on the 16th day of June, and ended on the 10th day of August, 1795 [hereafter Minutes of a Treaty], Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 567. 135 Henry Knox to Anthony Wayne, April 8, 1795, folder 5, box 2, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 136 Cayton, “‘Noble Actors’ upon ‘the Theatre of Honor,’” 239, 266. 133

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to Indian lands, and to institutionalize “fair purchase and sale” as a guiding principle for future treaties. At the same time, the United States intended to inaugurate a ­system of annuities to bind Indian leaders to the United States.137 This annuity system obscured U.S. reluctance to embrace core elements of the middle ground. Administration officials often couched annuities in terms of compensation for land, but the practice more closely resembled a patron–client relationship than a capitalist fee-simple purchase. George Washington characterized annuities as Janus-faced, serving as a means both to rectify the past by providing “retribution for injuries, not otherwise to be redressed” and to transform their future by integrating them into a market-like system “with goods under wholesome regulations.”138 This inchoate approach to Indian relations reveals policymakers’ better understanding of goals they hoped to obtain than processes that would achieve them. Native American delegations quickly understood that the United States did not intend the treaty to be a vehicle for creating a set of relationships built on political, economic, and military reciprocity. On June 17, New Corn, a Potawatomi chief, announced to Wayne his desire that when the council ended, American officials would “exchange our old [British] metals, and supply us with General Washington’s.”139 A symbolic exchange of honorary metals initiated an alliance between parties, but new alliances required more than ceremonial rites. As an act of diplomacy, honor, and hospitality, Indian delegates expected to be courted as equals, if not favored guests. While in council, chiefs called for luxuries enjoyed by American officers. Le Gris (Miami) and New Corn and The Sun (both Potawatomi) could not understand why American officers reserved for themselves rations of meat without offering any to tribal delegations. Le Gris was forthright, stating that his people “would like some mutton and pork, occasionally.” The Sun protested that Wayne had fallen short of his promises to make the fort’s provisions open to their wants, pointing out that he received “but a small allowance,” which sustained them for the morning but left them “hungry at night.” Wayne responded defensively, claiming the fort had few swine and sheep to offer and that even American officers only “occasionally” ate those meats. Notwithstanding the fort’s apparent shortages, he told these three chiefs that he would send each nation a single sheep and some alcohol for them to enjoy.140 Requests made by tribal delegations did not blindside the American officials who organized the council. Prior to the conference, Congress purchased and advanced to Wayne clothing, wampum, paints, tobacco, and other gifts Treaty Instructions to Anthony Wayne, April 4, 1794, folder 5, box 2, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS; Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 114. 138 George Washington to Edmund Pendleton, January 22, 1795, Writings of George Washington, 34: 99, 100. 139 June 17, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 564. 140 June 30, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 565. 137

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amounting to nearly $25,000.141 During the spring, Wayne facilitated ­delivery of supplies by ordering improvements to supply roads and river transportation. In May, he pressured relevant officers to forward shipments “as fast as ­possible.”142 When envoys arrived, Wayne deployed a calculated plan that balanced diplomacy with intimidation. Delegations received blankets, kettles, clothes, common tents, and other assorted items as gifts to incoming tribes.143 They met in council houses designed to hold more than fifty people, which he had ordered constructed on an idle garden.144 Native American envoys made camp, not inside the fort, but by redoubts near the north wall of the fort under the watchful eyes of Wayne’s cannoneers. To cautious elders, Wayne framed their location in terms of convenience and space, but to his superiors he depicted it as a carefully crafted negotiating tool. By the second week in July, not all delegations had arrived. Blue Jacket remained the most notable chief still absent from the council. While Delaware, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Wyandot, and other leaders made their way to Greenville, Blue Jacket put the finishing touches on a half-year essay to convince Shawnee villages to make peace with the Americans. When the chief promised peace to Wayne early in February, he knew a minority of Shawnee agreed with him. By summertime, a large contingent of the tribe, led most prominently by Captain Johnny, remained on the fence. Other Shawnee who had come to embrace peace abandoned it – if only temporarily – after one of their hunting camps fell under attack by partisan Kentuckians in the middle of May.145 Egushaway dissented among his Ottawa peers, arguing against peace. But as a chief obliged to represent the will of his community rather than his own agenda, he went to the treaty council as a peace advocate, arriving late, perhaps expressing his reluctance to attend.146 Even as the council began in June, some Shawnee and Wyandot met in Detroit with Joseph Brant, who continued his late quest to perpetuate the war.147 There, Brant realized that he had lost influence with the confederacy, especially its leaders, so he left for home.148 Having departed from Detroit before Brant arrived, Egushaway knew little of what transpired there. From camp at Greenville he skeptically measured divisions among the Shawnee and Wyandot and speculated on July 4 that Timothy Pickering to Anthony Wayne, April 15, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 405. 142 Lieutenant Strother to Major John Mills, April 30, 1795, folder 9, box 2, and Anthony Wayne to R. J. Meigs, May 2, 1795, folder 10, box 2, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 143 See for example, William Henry Harrison to Quartermaster, June 14, 1795, and William Henry Harrison to Quartermaster, June 26, 1795, box 47, Torrence Papers, CHS. 144 June 25, 1795, Diary Kept by David Barrow of his Travels thru Kentucky in 1795, KHS. 145 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 191, 195–6, 199. 146 Mann, “Greenville Treaty of 1795,” 183. 147 Joseph Brant to John Butler, June 28, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 33; July 18, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 568. 148 Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 518; June 15, 1795, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 410. 141

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neither would come.149 Yet even as he spoke these words, Blue Jacket hurriedly patrolled the road from Fort Recovery to Fort Wayne, encouraging all lagging delegations to make haste to the council.150 Not until July 18 did he arrive at Fort Greenville. Negotiations began in earnest on July 15, one month after the first delegations arrived. Wayne opened the council by reiterating the intent of the United States to make the Treaty of Fort Harmar the basis of the current agreement, which he promised to read to them in the coming days. The council then recessed to allow delegations to confer with each other. When the council reconvened on July 18, several chiefs argued against using the Fort Harmar treaty. Little Turtle suggested that the treaty was an unacceptable baseline because it had not included the Miami and it had been “effected entirely by the Six Nations.” He further questioned whether western nations who attended that council possessed authority to negotiate such an accord, characterizing them as having been “seduced” by the Six Nations. Knowing that none among the Indian delegations would endorse the Fort Harmar treaty, Little Turtle invited any representative to claim “whether or not it was agreeable to them.”151 Ojibwa chief Mashipinashiwish claimed to “know nothing of the treaty in question” professing that his “remote situation on Lake Michigan prevented [him] from being acquainted with it.”152 Wyandot chief  Tarhe called an end to the relatively disorganized Native American responses of the day by revealing that the delegations had not devised a common message or leadership protocol.153 To the other nations, the Wyandot and Delaware held among the highest ranks in a long-standing custom of totemic respect. Other tribes in the region referred to the Wyandot as Uncle and the Delaware as Grandfather. As such, they typically received the first two seats at intertribal councils.154 Despite their distinguished position, few expected Wyandot chiefs, who had not taken leadership roles during the war, to do so at Greenville. Tarhe proposed that the council assemble again when lagging delegations arrived, but his reluctance to assert himself as an authority created a power vacuum among the remaining representatives. On the evening of July 18, as the chiefs presented their counterarguments, the missing parties of Wyandot and Shawnee, including Blue Jacket, arrived at the council. When the council reconvened on July 20, Wayne maintained the legitimacy of the Fort Harmar treaty. He began articulating his “sentiments” upon the peace by reading a letter that had little to do with that treaty. Instead, he recited the message he sent to the confederacy on August 13, 1794, after taking possession of the Glaize but prior to Fallen Timbers. Although it called for peace, the letter threatened “war & desolation” and the potential murder of all Indian July 4, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 566. Sugden, Blue Jacket, 198, 201. 151 July 18 and July 20, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 567, 569. 152 July 18, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 568. 153 Ibid. 154 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 203. 149 150

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prisoners. Given the martial atmosphere of Fort Greenville, passages such as “No longer shut your eyes to your true interest & happiness, nor your ears to this last overture of Peace,” must have rung as hostile.155 After finishing his coercive digression, Wayne read the Fort Harmar treaty before calling into question the honesty and manhood of delegates who feigned ignorance of it.156 In private councils that night, the delegations likely accepted that Wayne would not be swayed from his goal to advance the border between Indian and settler territory far into the Ohio country. What little consensus existed among the confederacy’s members seems to have broken down in those discussions. During the next several days, the various nations jockeyed to shape the outcomes of potential cessions. In particular they debated the nature of that bordered land by addressing the issue of land ownership. On July 21, Masass, an Ojibwa chief speaking on behalf of the Three Fires delegations, exaggerated Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi rights to land in the region when he contended they had always been “true owners of those lands, but now [found] new masters have undertaken to dispose of them,” adding that they had “never received any compensation for them.” Tarhe exposed Masass’s argument as an extension of a debate from the private council the previous night. He felt “alarmed” and “confused” that the Three Fires would stake such a claim to those lands, and suggested that even if the land had been sold by some nations, no consensus existed to legitimize that exchange and compensation had not been delivered to all relevant parties. Little Turtle took the most strident tone as he tried to shift the debate. He exhibited Wayne’s apparent contradictory claims for their ownership of the land.157 On the one hand Wayne stated that the British had ceded land to the  Americans at the end of the Revolution, while at the same time claiming the Fort Harmar land cession as legitimate. Land might be possessed by Indians or whites, but not by both simultaneously. When Little Turtle transitioned to discuss Miami territories, he went further than Masass, averring that “the lands on the Wabash, and in this country, belong to me and my people.”158 He attempted to strengthen his proprietary claim to the land the following day by demonstrating improvements spread across the landscape. “The print of my ancestors’ houses,” he observed, “are every where to be seen in this portion” of the territory. He continued his case, alleging that other nations had allowed his forefathers to use the land for “time immemorial, without molestation or dispute.”159 Around the treaty council fire, Little Turtle had assumed Anthony Wayne to the Western Indians, August 13, 1794, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 2: 371–2. 156 July 20, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 569. 157 Carter likens the debate between Little Turtle and Wayne to those of Lincoln and Douglas as well as Gladstone and Disraeli. Carter, Life and Times of Little Turtle, 147, 149. 158 July 21, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 570 (original emphasis); Carter, Little Turtle, 150. 159 July 22, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 570. 155

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a commanding position and the debate he sowed held important consequences for the future of the bordered land. If Little Turtle’s proposition won the day, the borderland could become a fluid and possibly chaotic space as nations vied for control of land and land cessions altered the border in fits and starts. If advocates for pan-Indian treaties and consensus decision making proved victorious, greater potential existed for a stable bordered land managed by pan-Indian councils. Little Turtle’s rhetorical turn caught the attention of many at the council, especially people who had disagreed with him in the private meetings. Tarhe swiftly countered Little Turtle’s argument for discrete tribal ownership, invoking instead common ownership. “[N]o one in particular can justly claim this ground,” he began. “[I]t belongs, in common, to us all.”160 The next day, in move to apply established intertribal protocol and remind Little Turtle of his totemic place at the council, Blue Jacket announced that he would take a seat next to the Delaware and Wyandot envoys. “[T]he Shawnee are the elder brothers of the other nations present,” he stated, “it is therefore proper that I should sit next [to] my grandfathers and uncles.”161 Egushaway passed Blue Jacket the calumet and, for a moment, a majority of the former confederacy again expressed “one opinion.”162 As the confederacy regained its footing, Wayne dug in his heels. He reiterated the legitimacy of the Treaty of Fort Harmar, this time adding cessions made under the questionable Treaty of Fort McIntosh. “[T]he United States have twice paid for those lands,” he drummed, and “they will now, a third time, made compensation for them.” Refuting Little Turtle’s statement that prints of his ancestors’ houses were everywhere, Wayne privileged landscapes transformed by the French and British over those of the Miami and other Indians. But his most effective ploy was first to read aloud a selection of the Treaty of Paris, in which Britain ceded lands south of the Great Lakes, and then recite the first two sections of Jay’s Treaty, which stipulated not only peace but British surrender of its posts in U.S. territory in 1796. Jay’s Treaty remained unratified by the Senate, a fact he conveniently omitted in the negotiations.163 Although Wayne intended his reading from the Jay Treaty to stimulate uncertainty among Indian delegations and compliance to American demands, the representatives likely knew since May that the transfer of the military posts would be an included provision. Wayne’s coup then was in presenting the treaty as if it were already ratified, further distancing the confederacy from potential British allies.164 Perhaps more important, he alleged that the United States and British July 22, 1790, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 571. July 23, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 571. 162 July 23 and July 24, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 571–2, 573. 163 Wayne would not receive confirmation that Jay’s Treaty had been ratified and the president had signed it into law until September 4, 1795. July 24, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 573; September 4, 1795, in Elliot, The Poetical and Miscellaneous Works, 145. 164 Mann, “The Greenville Treaty of 1795,” 190. 160 161

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Canada would regulate an international border far from current American settlements, dividing Indian country and severing British involvement south the Great Lakes. Wayne concluded his speech by announcing that they had “performed every necessary ceremony” and that he would read the treaty to the council on July 27.165 Although the council did not formally meet, Wayne spent the next two days lobbying delegations individually. He identified for them the new “lines” that would transform the borderland into a bordered land and discussed the land cession.166 In these conferences, delegations raised their unique concerns about the treaty. One common request was to include a provision for “hunting on all the lands which they are to cede to the United States.”167 These conversations led to Article 7, which allowed hunting “so long as they demean themselves peaceably, and offer no injury to the people of the United States.”168 Its inclusion, while politically expedient, blurred the meaning of the bordered land by making the boundaries between Indian and settler territory fluid and vague despite American claims to its certitude. There is little doubt that Indian delegations met in private council but could not achieve the consensus many hoped to obtain. When the council reconvened on July 27, Wayne recited the treaty contents as promised. What manufactured unity had existed among members of the confederacy now crumbled. Almost in retort to Blue Jacket’s assertion on July 24 that the Seven Nations had “always been of one opinion” and Tarhe’s more recent advice that the confederacy “make no delay in deciding” on the treaty, Little Turtle proclaimed that the current agreement represented “an affair to which no one among us can give an answer” and that they should “take time to consider the subject, that we might unite in opinion, and express it unanimously.”169 He reprimanded the Shawnee delegation for having received the calumet but not yet having smoked it.170 The next day, July 28, The Sun suggested that “the three people who lived at the Miami villages” – the Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami – had placed all the nations in the current precarious situation by their “mischief.”171 Another Potawatomi chief, Au-si-me-the, likewise identified the Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware as having “caused all our misfortune.”172 New Corn joined the chorus. “I am much surprised,” he admonished, “that you cannot agree, in opinion, on the good work now before you.”173 July 24, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 573. Ibid.; July 26, 1795, in Elliot, The Poetical and Miscellaneous Works, 143. 167 July 26, 1795, in Elliot, The Poetical and Miscellaneous Works, 142. 168 Article 7, Treaty of Greenville, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 563. 169 July 24 and July 27, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 573, 574 (original emphasis). 170 July 28, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 575. 171 Ibid., 574. 172 July 30, 1975, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 576. 173 July 28, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 575. 165 166

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With the common ownership contingent in disarray, Little Turtle again tried to advance his argument. He asserted that the Miami, as elder brothers to the Eel River Indians and the Wea, stood as “the proprietors” of all land stretching across most of what is now Indiana and presented papers in which George Washington announced he “protected us in the possession of our lands.”174 Wayne’s proposal to run a border from Fort Recovery to the mouth of the Kentucky River, Little Turtle argued, represented an addition to claims made under the Treaty of Fort Harmar. Moreover, it took away the “best part” of Miami hunting grounds. Instead, he recommended the line run down the Great Miami River, as originally discussed.175 Ultimately Little Turtle and others wanted Wayne to certify land claims of their own, defining boundaries between each nation, making land ownership more clear and land cessions less contentious. Such a permanent vision of land ownership flew in the face of longstanding traditions built upon overlapping land claims. But Little Turtle seems to have understood, at least in part, how the United States hoped to transform the West. Here, as he had done earlier, he deployed a language of proprietorship familiar to Wayne and other American representatives. Other delegates chafed at Little Turtle’s repeated attempts to divide the tribes. One goal these delegates had rallied around was to establish a precedent at the Treaty of Greenville whereby the United States could not seek land cessions from select villages or tribes. Instead, they wanted large councils, like the one at Greenville, where many tribes who held overlapping claims could accept or deny land cessions and receive compensation. Tarhe asserted this point earlier during the council, claiming that land “belongs, in common, to us all.”176 He and others employed this language of common rights to describe what in practice operated as usufruct rights. Under this rubric, individuals and villages used common lands for varied purposes at different times of the year. Sometimes land could go unused by a village for years without sacrificing its claim to competitors; councils and wars sorted out who used land and when. As composite communities with broadly overlapping land claims had grown and Americans moved into the region during the 1780s and 1790s, Ohio country villages competed with each other even more for the region’s resources. Usufruct rights ordered the land and its resources in the minds of the region’s diverse population. Confronted with competing rubrics for land ownership in Indian country, Wayne chose to endorse neither directly. If the United States supported Little Turtle’s plan to define borders between each tribe, the federal government might face extravagant expenses and complicated diplomacy weeding through competing claims. Individual nations, members of Congress, or the Washington administration might accuse Wayne of corruption or favoritism. July 29 and July 30, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 576, 577. July 29, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 576. 176 July 22, 1790, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 571. 174 175

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Potential for strife increased without consensus, and there appeared to be little of that at the council. If, however, Wayne accepted Tarhe’s notion that all tribes held all land in common, future land cessions might be vetoed by individual tribes. Fortunately for Wayne, he had already received instructions to pursue a composite treaty, though for reasons far removed from Tarhe’s argument. Therefore, in council Wayne simply described the “impropriety” of such a task, stating that “You, Indians, best know your respective boundaries.”177 As July turned to August the treaty council moved to conclusion. On July 30, attending members of the former confederacy reluctantly, but nevertheless unanimously, agreed to accept the treaty as Wayne presented it.178 Tribal delegates had won few of the arguments they proposed. By acquiescing to the treaty they conceded an imbalance of power in the region. Red Pole arrived the following day with eighty-eight Shawnee and a composite group of twentyseven Wyandot, Delaware, and representatives from the Six Nations. They had come from Detroit, where they had been debating whether or not to rekindle the war. On August 3, Red Pole assented to the council’s decision, endorsing the treaty.179 Most delegates remained at Greenville for almost a week, socializing and waiting for Wayne to distribute presents, which he did on August 8, first to the Wyandot and then to others.180 As the week wore on, men departed for home.181 Several delegations lingered until August 20 when the legion performed a triumphalist “miniature representation” of the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which one soldier described as “an exact representation of the novel and successful method of fighting the Indians, invented by Gen. Wayne.”182 Most, however, missed the histrionics, having hastened home to begin the harvest. Corn was in the milk and other crops had ripened while the council progressed and much work remained to be done. Within a few months, the villages would leave for their winter hunting grounds, some of which now belonged to the United States. Several contingents of Shawnee had not come to the treaty. Among the largest was a community led by Pucksekaw living near the headwaters of the Scioto. They understandably held out as victims of one of the Kentuckian raids into southern Ohio during the spring.183 After leaving the council, Blue Jacket visited several of these communities, informing them of the treaty and encouraging them to cease hostilities.184 Only after hearing that “peace was finished” did Pucksekaw lead sixty warriors to Fort Greenville on September 9, July 30, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 577. Ibid., 578. 179 August 3, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 579. 180 August 7, 1795, Minutes of a Treaty, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 579–80. 181 August 11, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 181–2. 182 August 20, 1795, in Elliot, The Poetical and Miscellaneous Works, 144. 183 General Wayne to Governor St. Clair, June 5, 1795, and Governor St. Clair to Governor Shelby, June 20, 1795, St. Clair Papers, 2: 375, 386; Sugden, Blue Jacket, 198. 184 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 209. 177 178

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where he pledged to “do no more mischief.”185 Others remained recalcitrant, ­including Tecumseh’s band (Shawnee) who, as scholar John Sugden contends, “had no intention of going to the American fort . . . to approve of what had been done.”186 With the treaty completed, Indian delegations often neglected finer diplomatic protocols that had been important earlier. Few chiefs socialized at American forts on their return journey. The few who did received warm receptions from American commanders. On August 23, Red Pole stopped at Fort Defiance with a large party of Shawnee and a train of approximately twenty horses carrying gifts from Greenville. Four chiefs in that party dined with Major Hunt and had a peaceful conversation. But for some unscrupulous individuals, the wealth distributed at the treaty council was too much to pass up. Although Wayne limited rascality at the council by barring all but approved sutlers, his order did not extend beyond Fort Greenville.187 That night at Fort Defiance, an insidious trader named Felix swindled members of the Shawnee party out of their presents after intoxicating them. After receiving a number of complaints, U.S. officers decided to show that the will of the United States would be enforced, at least in the vicinity of its forts. The commander ordered Felix to return the gifts and “depend on their [the Shawnee] generosity for payment in peltry.”188 Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and others in the federal government did not initially intend these forts to become a disciplinary arm of the American government against whites, as they had during the 1780s. But military authority targeted both settlers and Indians to maintain order and security. Through the treaty, the United States obtained sixteen military reserves spread across Indian country east of the Mississippi River, as well as the right for American military and civilians to travel freely between them.189 To allay Indian suspicions that forts were part of an American expansionist policy, Pickering advised Wayne to emphasize the conveniences the installations would provide, including their use as trading centers. The reservations, as Pickering described them, would not harass them or “impose the smallest restraint on their enjoyment of their lands.”190 This rosy assessment underestimated the effects a permanent military presence would have in Indian country. Conclusion of the treaty process likely did not diminish feelings of frustration and anger. As families returned to their villages, they faced another uncertain fall and winter. New fields had been planted but did not match the productive capacity of the Glaize and the Miami Villages. A number of communities Supplemental to the Treaty of Greenville, n.d., Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 583. Barbara Mann contends that Wayne or one of his aides fraudulently added names to the list of signing chiefs after the conclusion of the council. Mann, “The Greenville Treaty of 1795,” 195. 186 John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 92–3. 187 June 1, 1795, General Wayne’s Orderly Book, MPHC, 34: 614–5. 188 August 23–5, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 183–4. 189 Article 3, Treaty of Greenville, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 562. 190 Timothy Pickering to Anthony Wayne, April 8, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 396. 185

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still relied upon British rations to supplement their diets. Winter hunts lasted longer during the winter of 1795–6 than the previous year. Not only did hunters rely more heavily on game resources, they needed to renegotiate contested intertribal boundaries in the wake of the treaty.191 The former members of the confederacy also wrestled with an altered social and economic landscape in the West. More traders and merchants from Upper Canada and the Ohio Valley pressed into the region, servicing both villages and military posts. As the dust settled from the treaty, British officials in Upper Canada worried most about how Indian allegiances might be affected. “From every account I have been able to collect,” R. G. England reported to Lieutenant Governor Simcoe, “the Indians do not appear perfectly reconciled to the United States, and their general attachment to their old Father is not lessened.”192 Time appeared to confirm these reports as Native American leaders broadly expressed discontent with the Treaty of Greenville.193 Some anger might have been displayed to preserve continuing alliances with the British, even as their new relationships with the United States problematized diplomacy. But their displeasure cannot be underestimated. Not only had the confederation lost the war, it faced a late summer humiliation at Greenville that stung deeply. When British agents sought land cessions of their own in Upper Canada beginning in September 1795, many leaders must have felt concern the future of Indian authority in the region.194 White Ohio Valley settlers, especially merchants and commercially oriented producers, proved the beneficiaries of federal war efforts. In 1795 alone, the federal government spent more than $125,000 in the Ohio Valley for transporting provisions to the western posts. Expenses included approximately $9,500 for fifty ox teams, $36,000 for 1,200 packhorses, $15,000 for corn and hay to feed the work animals, and nearly $7,000 for 112 fifty- and sixtyfoot Kentucky boats.195 More federal money flowed as wages to soldiers and militia, contractors, merchants, and farmers throughout the region.196 Even though the war was over, the federal military and its ancillary forces remained a significant outlet for regional goods. Henry Knox leveraged Wayne’s victory at Fallen Timbers to persuade Congress and the Washington administration that the United States should maintain a more substantial standing army than September 24 and 25, 1795, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 421. R. G. England to J. G. Simcoe, September 8, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 91–2. 193 Lord Dorchester to the Duke of Portland, October 26, 1795, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 112. 194 Alexander McKee to R. G. England, September 4, 1795, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 91. 195 Estimate of Qr Mr Stores, and means of Transportation requir’d for use of the Legion of the United States and the Western Posts, for the year 1795, box 2, folder 8, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 196 Anthony Wayne to Col. Kilpatrick, May 14, 1795, box 2, folder 10, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 191 192

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existed in the early 1790s.197 “Notwithstanding it is now a time of peace,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Spencer to Ohio Territory’s militia officers reflecting the breadth of the trend, peace would be best secured by being “well prepared for war” and remaining properly supplied.198 Still, for most producers in the Ohio Valley, peace meant that valuable resources could be redirected from militias and guards to labor and market production, improving efficiency. Trade flowed along roads and rivers with reduced risk of damage, destruction, and pillage. Merchants and members of the military who became ­knowledgeable about the region through their service and business during the war entered into land speculation. Only seventeen days after the Treaty of Greenville concluded, Arthur St. Clair, James Wilkinson, Jonathan Dayton, and Israel Ludlow together purchased lands along the Miami River, which also happened to be the water route to American forts in the Ohio country.199 Dayton, Ohio, became the most important of the settlements established there. By 1796, an officer in the western legion observed that the “most striking and pleasing consequence of the Indian Treaty, is the rapid progression towards an important state of population, and, consequently, agriculture and commercial improvements, which this territory has lately exhibited.”200 Federal efforts to end the war with the northern confederacy and open the Mississippi River for commercial trade animated western loyalties. Skepticism of the federal government expressed during the early 1790s largely disappeared after the summer of 1795. “[O]f the faith of the nation we can have no doubt,” Judge William Goforth declared to the crowd listening to his Fourth of July speech in 1796. “[T]he great attention they have paid us,” he continued, extolling federal commitment to the region, “and the free expenditures of the national revenue in order to afford us protection are the highest possible pledges of their integrity.” Yet Goforth fell short of giving all credit to the national government. Instead, it was a collective endeavor in which “the adventurers to this territory have in some measure assisted in forwarding the national arms.”201 Although the war for the Ohio Valley began as a regional conflict, by the middle of the 1790s westerners viewed it as part of a national agenda, one they helped win in partnership with the federal government. During the next Paul David Nelson, Anthony Wayne: Soldier of the Early Republic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 277. 198 Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Spencer to militia officers, May 29, 1797, vol. 1, John Stites Gano  Papers, CHS. This letter is also available in “Selections from the Gano Papers,” The Quarterly Publication of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, vol. 15 (January– June 1920), 5. 199 James R. Albach, Annals of the West: Embracing a Concise Account of Principal Events Which Have Occurred in the Western States and Territories, from the Discovery of the Mississippi Valley to the Year Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-Six (Pittsburgh: W. S. Haven, 1857), 718–9. 200 April 19, 1796, in Elliot, The Poetical and Miscellaneous Works, 153 (original emphasis). 201 Speech of Judge William Goforth on July 4, 1796, folder 12, box 3, John Armstrong ­Papers, IHS. 197

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decade, Ohio Valleyans continued to mold that victory, often wedding regional and national issues. Despite an appearance of sovereignty and authority in the Ohio Valley achieved through the Jay Treaty and the Greenville Treaty, the United States faced real limits to its power in the region. Jay’s Treaty created a framework for a bordered land that would not be realized without institutional investment to enforce it. On paper, the new boundary dividing Indian country and settler territory ran continuously from Lake Erie to Georgia, but in the Ohio country Indians still hunted on ceded land, bringing them in close contact with white settlers, especially as the outskirts of American settlements inched toward the boundary over time.202 Anthony Wayne had envisioned the establishment of “a kind of consecrated ground” that “ought to be put between the Savages & white inhabitants” to be held by Congress “in Mort Main, & neither sell or suffer it to be settled upon any occasion or pretext whatever until some distant & future day, when circumstances might render it expedient and proper.” The wars of the previous decades had engendered racial enmity “productive of constant and mutual distrust, animosity and Murders” when “White & Red people [were] too near neighbors.”203 Article Seven of the Treaty of Greenville precluded the type of bordered land Wayne imagined. American forts, with relatively small numbers of soldiers stationed there, could no more police the Ohio country than could the British before them. Indian country and the international border remained fluid in terms of loyalty, economy, and geographic mobility. What the United States had achieved, at least, was an illusion of authority and a precedent for regional hegemony. It would take another fifteen years to transform that illusion into something closer to a reality.

Dorothy V. Jones, License for Empire: Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 175. 203 Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, May 15, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 417. 202

4 Webs of Commerce

The end of the Indian war offered the national government an opportunity to shift its energies toward infrastructure development. Although the federal government supported coastal navigation, little consensus emerged to broaden public works initiatives to include transportation improvements on land beyond the national road.1 Indeed, Albert Gallatin’s 1808 Report on Roads and Canals became noteworthy for its vision and failure to be implemented. Scholars have consequently emphasized the role of individual states in shaping public works projects, especially for the period following 1815.2 For the earlier period, studies of the early republic tend to praise a federal government that embraced laissez-fair policies, or they reveal legislative ambivalence as congressmen and senators debated potential economic benefits and problems associated with concentrating power in the national government.3 Yet despite political obstacles to grandiose, nationally directed plans, the federal government nevertheless affected national infrastructure and patterns of settlement John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 2 John H. Krenkel, Illinois Internal Improvements, 1818–1848 (Cedar Rapids: Torch Press, 1958); Harry N. Scheiber, The Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820–1861 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1969); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, vol. IV of The Economic History of the United States (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1951); Roger L. Ransom, “Public Canal Investment and the Opening of the Old Northwest,” in David C. Klinaman and Richard K. Vedder, eds., Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History: The Old Northwest (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), 246–68. 3 John Lauritz Larson, “‘Bind the Republic Together’: The National Union and the Struggle for a System of Internal Improvements,” JAH, vol. 74 (Sept. 1987), 363–87; Robert E. Wright and Brian P. Murphy, “The Private Provision of Transportation Infrastructure in Antebellum America: Lessons and Warnings,” Social Science Research Network, . 1

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in less recognized ways before the War of 1812.4 This transportation network encouraged the growth of commercial agriculture in the region and made the federal government a significant producer and consumer in the western economy. British Upper Canadian officials made analogous investments in internal improvements designed to transition the economy further away from the Laurentian-controlled fur trade. Together the imperial and federal powers fostered the transformation of settler lands in the bordered land toward a commercial agricultural society. Far from ending the relationship between the federal government and American settlers in the Ohio Valley, the Treaty of Greenville perpetuated it by preserving and adding military garrisons across the Northwest Territory. White Ohio Valleyans remained ambivalent about such a lingering military presence. Many westerners, especially a growing majority who gravitated toward emergent Jeffersonian Republican principles, believed that “standing armies are dangerous to liberty and ought not to exist in a free government” and that “the general and state government” should rely on militias instead.5 For others, the military had become a vital outlet for surplus agriculture and livestock, benefiting regional producers, implying that a continued military presence would be a boon to husbandmen and merchants. As he made his way down the Ohio River, one reverend characterized western life in 1795 as difficult because “the necessaries of life are very dear, owing to the call for the army.” But he cast such hardship in a positive light, believing “an industrious man may make what money he pleases in this country; especially if the army continues.”6 Kentuckians, at least, could rest easy knowing that no federal military installation existed in their state, though several offered protection from just across the Ohio River. Settlers living north of the Ohio not only had to accept the continuing presence of soldiers, they also contended with a territorial government led by Governor Arthur St. Clair built on federal – especially Federalist – patronage.7 Even when scholars have identified such influences, they tend to explore the era after 1815. Laurence J. Malone, Opening the West: Federal Improvements before 1860 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998); Francis Paul Prucha, Broadax and Bayonet: The Role of the United States Army in the Development of the Northwest, 1815–1860 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1953). 5 “At a meeting of a large number of citizens of the county of Lincoln, with some from the counties adjacent, at the town of Stanford, on Tuesday the 11th of September, 1798,” Stewart’s Kentucky Herald, September 18, 1798, 2; Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), 222; Saul Cornell, A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 12, 93, 95. 6 David Barrow, 1795 Diary of Reverend David Barrow: Wilderness Travels from Virginia through North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Miami and Scioto Valleys in Northwest Territory from May to September, 1795 (Knightstown, IN: Bookmark, 1980), 23. 7 Andrew R. L. Cayton, “Radicals in the ‘Western World’: The Federalist Conquest of TranAppalachian North America,” in Federalists Reconsidered, 89–94; Larson, “‘Bind the Republic Together,’” 369. 4

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The federal government and contractors continued to rely almost exclusively on Ohio Valley agriculture and livestock to support American forts.8 Each year the Quartermaster’s Department published advertisements in western newspapers calling for bids on subsistence contracts for the nation’s posts.9 After 1798, the secretary of war subsumed the quartermaster general’s responsibilities, ­ending what military scholar Erna Risch characterizes as the era of civilian ascendency. Thereafter, she argues, the supply system became “one of centralized control.” The department compartmentalized the national fort network into sixteen contractual districts, six of them west of the Appalachian Mountains. Merchant readers of Ohio Valley newspapers would have been most interested in bidding on the Detroit-Niagara contract (including Michilimackinac, Fort Wayne, and Chicago), the Vincennes-Fort Massac contract (including New Madrid, Chickasaw Bluffs, Natchez, and Fort Adams), the St. Louis contract (including St. Charles, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia), and for those with a southerly eye for business, the Knoxville-Nashville contract (including South-West Point, Tellico, and places in Cherokee country between the Tennessee River and Nashville). Merchants lucky enough to obtain a contract would be expected to supply easily accessible forts with three months worth of provisions with each delivery and those distant from core supply areas, such as Michilimackinac, with at least six months provisions.10 Entrepreneurial men used what connections they could muster to tap into federal funds. In March 1796, Kentuckian Peter Casey offered Isaac Shelby and his neighbors the “generous” price of $25 per head of 500-pound cattle because he expected a new wave of purchases to take place shortly. He noted that he was willing to pay between $1,000 and $1,500, though he did not have the cash to cover the expense at that time.11 As contractor purchases became routine, merchants even “anticipated” these large purchases, raising prices to milk more money from the national state.12 Despite an expanding western economy, contractor shortfalls continued to plague the military. Wayne became so frustrated by them that he began arguing that the military should purchase directly and locally to save as much as $3.84 per barrel of flour.13 As a theoretical exercise, Wayne had a point. By exploiting military labor and resources to move goods, while also deducting costs associated James Morrison to John Breckinridge, August 29, 1796, box 14, Breckinridge Family Papers, LOC. 9 See for instance, Stewart’s Kentucky Herald, March 27, 1806, 2. 10 Erna Risch, Quartermaster Support of the Army: A History of the Corps, 1775–1939 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1989; rpt. 1962), 117, 123. 11 Peter Casey to Isaac Shelby, March 9, March 17, and April 25, 1796, box 3, Shelby Family Papers, LOC. 12 James McHenry to James Wilkinson, April 1, 1796, folder 1793–1796, box 1, War of 1812 Papers, LL. 13 Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, September 19, 1795, in Richard C. Knopf, ed., Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1960), 458. 8

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with contractor and subcontractor labor and profits, direct ­purchases ­presumably could have resulted in substantial savings. Still, his calculus did not consider the legwork required to aggregate orders from diverse smaller merchants, nor did he account for the tactic used by many merchants and farmers – withholding crops and animals until desperation elevated prices in their favor. Wayne’s brainstorm went no further than the paper he wrote it on. Supply shortages made officers and soldiers a consumer base for Ohio Valley merchants who marketed to installations as far north as Forts Greenville and Jefferson. As hostilities with the northern confederacy waned, Cincinnati’s growing merchant class, in particular, stood to gain because of its port, nearby forts, and improved roads Wayne constructed during the war. As early as 1790, Abijah Hunt, who had moved to Cincinnati from New Jersey, won exclusive sutlery rights for American posts in the lower Ohio Valley.14 When Wayne authorized the creation of a sutler’s store at Fort Greenville in 1793 and Fort Jefferson during the autumn of 1794, Cincinnati merchants used new military roads rather than rivers as avenues for conveyance.15 William Stanley, one such entrepreneur, joyfully received word that soldiers at Fort Jefferson described “a thousand wants” and that “Nothing will supply them but money and when that comes they will supply themselves.” Stanley’s friend who wrote him on the matter advised, “I verrily [sic] believe that you will get the greater part of the money that comes into this garrison.”16 John Stites Gano, another Cincinnati merchant, likewise received word that if he or anyone else established an “eating house and tavern” outside Fort Jefferson, he would find it “very profitable.” His informant observed that “All hungry persons call here,” and traders already made money selling beef and bread to between twenty and thirty people a day.17 Soldiers with disposable income made ideal isolated and captive consumers. Because officers and soldiers received their pay irregularly, their window for spending tended to be periodic and intensive. In April 1798, Secretary of War James McHenry sent $26,000 to pay the army in the Ohio country and gave instructions to his agent to collect more cash there on behalf of the federal government.18 Into the next decade, approximately $5,000 flowed from the War Department to officers and men in Ohio and Kentucky alone every four months, with officers being reimbursed nearly an additional $1,000 for expenditures supplemental to their subsistence.19 The process of paying William Stanley to J. S. Gano, May 30, 1790, John Stites Gano Papers, 3: 236, CHS. Diary of Major William Stanley, 1790–1810, Quarterly Publication of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, vol. 14 (April–July 1919), 22, 23. 16 Aaron Reeder to William Stanley, October 27, 1794, John Stites Gano Papers, 3: 229, CHS. 17 Andrew Marchalk to J. S. Gano, June 6 [no year], John Stites Gano Papers, 3: 217, CHS. 18 James McHenry to James Wilkinson, April 6, 1798, box 1, War of 1812 Papers, LL. 19 Statement Due the United States in Acct Current (of disbursements for Pay to the troops in Ohio & Kentucky) with James Taylor, August 1, 1809, and Abstract of Disbursements made by James Taylor on account of Pay to the United States within the States of Ohio and Kentucky, January 14, 1810, box 1, War of 1812 Papers, LL. 14 15

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soldiers bolstered the western credit system as larger local merchants and the few credit-extending partnerships provided paper currency in lieu of specie. As paymaster Caleb Swain reported from Cincinnati to Anthony Wayne in 1796, “I have the pleasure to inform you that my success in filling the bills here and in Kentucky, has been such, that I am now amply in cash” to make payments to the army.20 The influx of federal tax dollars provided merchants opportunities to extend credit to local farmers and entrepreneurs. The process also redistributed that wealth out of the Ohio Valley by spreading cash into the northern Ohio country via military payments. As money flowed along the military roads, regional merchants looked to capitalize. Heated competition arose as they sought reliable and cheap sources of beef, pork, flour, corn, whiskey, and sundries.21 Unlike contractors, sutlers operated independently, advancing their goods at their own risk without military protection. When successful, these ventures could be very profitable. Indeed, merchants found that “the trade with the Army & Military posts . . . in the Western Country have been a very considerable source . . . for the Merchandise brought from the Atlantic ports.”22 However, impediments to reaching soldiers could have devastating material consequences for affected merchants. To bring order to the gaggle of sutlers arriving at forts, Anthony Wayne ordered General James Wilkinson to appoint a “Grand Suttler [sic]” who would “have the sole Power of Licencing [sic]” anyone who wished to trade with the army. Wilkinson then “Patronized” Abijah Hunt, who had developed extensive mercantile relationships with many western officers during his six years in the region.23 Although other Ohio Valley merchants continued to sell at many forts, Hunt gradually excluded rival merchants by denying them licenses between 1796 and 1798. He reportedly also exploited his influence with officers by having them “recommend to the men to trade with” him, as well as ordering competitors out of particular forts. Hunt’s clout increased after Anthony Wayne departed the region, leaving Wilkinson to govern regional military affairs. Suddenly, “a number of suttlers [sic] of unblamable [sic] character, with large supplies of necessaries on hand[,] brought forward with great expence of transportation; ware suddenly oblig’d to shut up their shops, let their property perish, retransport it to the settlements or sell it to the person who had the exclusive privelege [sic] at his own price.”24 Caleb Swain to Anthony Wayne, September 4, 1796, folder 16, box 2, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 21 Chas. Hyde to William Stanley, November 18, 1795, John Stites Gano Papers, 3: 213, CHS. 22 Petition of Merchants & Traders in the Territory of the United States Norwest [sic] of the River Ohio to Congress, n.d., Hildreth Collection, Marietta College Collection, OHS. 23 Petition of Cincinnati Merchants to James McHenry, February 27, 1798, Hildreth Collection, Marietta College Collection, OHS; John Hamtramck to Abijah Hunt, October 30, 1795, folder 4, Dandridge Papers, CHS. 24 Petition of Merchants & Traders in the Territory of the United States Norwest [sic] of the River Ohio to Congress, n.d., Hildreth Collection, Marietta College Collection, OHS. 20

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In response, more than twenty individual merchants and partnerships from Cincinnati ­remonstrated to Secretary of War James McHenry and to Congress asking them to bring a halt to arbitrary limitations on the lucrative trade exercised by Hunt and tacitly authorized by Wilkinson. Although these merchants critiqued Hunt’s manipulation of the sutler system, many of them would have acted similarly had their positions been exchanged. Because of their service in the recent war or in the Revolution, merchants understood military politics and the influence that might come from it. Officers relied on merchants to supplement their dull, repetitive diet and worn clothes, as well as to obtain luxury items that distinguished them from common soldiers. Major William Winston, an officer at Fort Greenville, ordered bacon, good butter, muslin for sheets, tea, some “B[ottom] legs with sole leather,” and one “Handsome Woman” to help with his domestic chores.25 Such were the benefits merchant connections could afford officers. Merchants profited as word of mouth expanded their businesses, opened the door to trade at forts, and perhaps led to future business partnerships when officers were discharged. After resigning his commission, John Armstrong formed a partnership with John Smith in Hamilton County, Ohio, not only to supply contractors, but also to sell wares to emigrants who arrived daily.26 Together, officers, soldiers, and merchants forged mutually beneficial connections between the federal military and local communities.27 The military received supplies from local vendors, while settlers and businessmen enjoyed enhanced regional security and the recently augmented road network. Merchants and others who conducted business with the military also gained valuable knowledge from officers and soldiers who offered advance word of wartime developments that might affect the regional and international markets.28 Among the emerging towns throughout the Ohio Valley that benefited from merchant–military relations, perhaps none did so more than Cincinnati. By 1795 observers characterized that settlement as a “thriving town” where “Business of almost every kind is going on rapidly.”29 The next year, an educated Yankee officer remarked how the “population of this town, the number and elegance of its houses, the extent and variety of its trade, &c. have greatly increased since my first arrival in this country.” Cincinnati’s transformation as a military and mercantile center, however, did not meet his liking. “[D]etestable scenes of riot and drunkenness” made it, in his moral opinion, “the Sodom of Major William Winston to James Smith, April 26, 1795, and Major William Winston to James Smith, June 8, 1795, William Winston Papers, CHS. 26 Papers for a Settlement with Smith and John Armstrong, November 6, 1795, folder 8, box 3, and Original Memorandum of the goods deliver’d Mr. Smith on division of the Store, March 15, 1796, folder 10, box 3, John Armstrong Papers, IHS. 27 A. Marchalk to J. S. Gano, August 27, 1797, John Stites Gano Papers, 3: 215, CHS. 28 Major William Winston to James Findlay, July 19, 1795, William Winston Papers, CHS. 29 June 15, 1795, Diary Kept by David Barrow of his Travels thru Kentucky in 1795, KHS. 25

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the western country.”30 Other witnesses looked past the ruffians, to highlight how “by engaging in any of the manufactories . . . no prudent man can fail of increasing his own property, and being highly useful to his country.”31 Although Cincinnatians quickly addressed opportunities at forts relatively near the city, establishing trade to more northerly forts took time. Not until October 1795 did the first Cincinnati merchant arrive in the northern Ohio country. Eager to survey the potential in the new northern market, Abijah Hunt journeyed along roads hewn by Wayne during the war, on his way stopping at Fort Wayne and Fort Defiance. There he saw troops on half ration because of continued supply problems.32 Soldiers at Forts Defiance and Wayne in particular suffered as commanders from installations south of them siphoned provisions destined for them.33 After spending two days at the Glaize and Fort Defiance, Hunt traveled to Fort Wayne and then Detroit in anticipation of the British turnover of posts south of the Great Lakes.34 The treacherous journey north along military roads made many Ohio Valley merchants chary of the risks involved. Nevertheless, Hunt represents early evidence of a new wave of mercantile ties and integration between the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes economies. During the 1780s, John Askin had imagined a more unified Canadian and American commercial economy built on agriculture rather than the fur trade. With the American military providing an impetus and an initial transportation infrastructure, Canadian merchants began to reassert that vision by reaching out to the new American forts. Ohio Valleyans and others in proximity to the new bordered land moved more slowly but still in that direction. Despite the distance, Kentuckians continued to benefit from expansion into northern Ohio. American contractors purchased cattle in Kentucky and drove them to Detroit to meet U.S. military demands in that city.35 By the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century, merchants operated at forts as far away as Chicago.36

July 3, 1796, in James Elliot, The Poetical and Miscellaneous Works of James Elliot, Citizen of Guilford, Vermont, and Late a Noncommissioned Officer in the Legion of the United States (Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, 1976; rpt. 1798), 159. 31 Letter 11, March 26, 1795, in Harry Toulman, ed., “Comments on America and Kentucky, 1793–1802.” RKHS, vol. 47 (Jan. 1949), 9. 32 April 9 and November 9, 1795, in Richard C. Knopf, ed., “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance: The Journal of Joseph Gardner Andrews for the Year 1795,” Ohio History, vol. 66 (1957), 83, 255. 33 B. Howe to the Commanding Officer at Fort Defiance, June 16, 1796, Torrence Papers, CHS. 34 November 3 and 5, 1795, “A Surgeon’s Mate at Fort Defiance,” 254; John Hamtramck to Abijah Hunt, October 30, 1795, folder 4, Dandridge Papers, CHS. 35 August 21, 1799, “A Journal of a Journey to Detroit Set out on the 21st day of Augt 1799 by myself and others,” KHS. 36 B. Varnum to Henry Dearborn, August 17, 1808, reel 32, Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of War, Main Series, 1801–70 (hereafter LRSW-M), RG 107, Archives I, National Archives and Records Administrations (hereafter NARA), Washington, DC. 30

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Although Jay’s Treaty transformed the Great Lakes into a bordered land on paper, the international boundary remained porous. The new weight given to commercial husbandry and the largely Euro-American racial composition of that market-oriented economy underscored significant differences between the new bordered land and its predecessor, which was rooted in the fur trade. What prevented a more clearly defined bordered land from taking shape was the inability and indifference of imperial and federal officials to police and enforce that border. The establishment of Presque Isle (later Erie, Pennsylvania) illustrated limits of state power and commercial potential of the newly defined region. Building on the site of an old French fort, American settlers began laying out Presque Isle following the November 11, 1794 treaty with the Six Nations, in which that confederacy relinquished what was known as the Erie Triangle and permitted the construction of a road to connect that site to Fort Schlosser at Niagara.37 By the spring of 1795, the town began to grow, attracting farmers and entrepreneurs from the United States and Upper Canada. Upper Canadian merchants scurried to take advantage of a lucrative market. Because so little competition existed in western Pennsylvania, Canadian merchants charged high prices, which supply-hungry residents of Presque Isle willingly paid. In one extreme case, some merchants sold salted pork there for more than two and one-half times the standard asking price offered by the government that the Upper Canadian government “condemned as unsound.”38 The short but dangerous jaunt across lake waters during summer months meant that merchants who acquired flour and corn from farms along the northern littoral of Lake Erie and its tributaries could deliver better prices than Pennsylvanian traders carrying similar goods over land by way of Pittsburgh. Other traders bought up as much wheat and corn as they could get their hands on to sell it in the port town.39 Within a year of the town’s founding, trade across the lake became regular. Both American and British officials seemed unconcerned about the border trade that crisscrossed Lake Erie. Local officials took greater notice when four deserters from the British navy absconded with a “King’s vessel” loaded with furniture and tried to sell the boat and its stock at the nascent port town. The American commandant at Presque Isle, suspecting the ship and its contents might be stolen, ordered both seized and the men taken into custody.40 When notified Timothy Pickering to Anthony Wayne, April 15, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 406; J. B. Mansfield, ed., History of the Great Lakes, vol. I. (Chicago: J. H. Beers, 1899), 202; Isabel Thompson Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 1743–1807: Man of Two Worlds (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984), 515. 38 J. G. Simcoe to Charles Long, November 3, 1795, in E. A. Cruikshank, ed., The Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, with Allied Documents Relating to His Administration of the Government of Upper Canada, vol. 4 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1923–6), 119. 39 John Warren to E. B. Littlehales, November 12, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 140. 40 Russell Bissell to J. G. Simcoe, October 9, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 100. 37

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of the larceny, Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe wrote the ­commanding officer of Presque Isle that he wanted “to enter into any regulation that may be necessary to prevent” any such incident from happening again.41 Captain Russell Bissell, a newly appointed U.S. commander to Presque Isle, happily accepted Simcoe’s offer. He replied, noting that he looked forward to “­promoting a friendly intercourse” between the two sides of the lake in accordance with the recent Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation. “I have every reason to believe,” wrote Bissell, “that the advantages would be reciprocal to the two Governments.”42 The border trade continued, but each government watched trade on the lakes more closely. Even as increased international commerce made filling the King’s Stores more problematic, expansion of trade fit within a larger goal of improving the area’s economy. One hope had been to develop an improved shipping industry on the Great Lakes. The Duke of Portland had instructed Simcoe that the “Legislature should give all possible encouragement to their Navigation,” including mappings and soundings of all the lakes.43 This, he and others believed, would strengthen the colonial economy and thus make it less vulnerable to American expansionism. Shipping and mapping the Lakes gained heightened importance after Jay’s Treaty, which required British forces to relinquish their posts south of the Great Lakes, opening the door to American commercial expansion, not only on the Lakes but also along the St. Lawrence River. Rumors that American surveyors had “evaded” garrisons at Oswego, New York during the spring of 1795 and had begun surveying the southern shore of the St. Lawrence River did little to quell British concerns that their imperial monopoly on the Lakes might be in jeopardy.44 But with the bulk of new border commerce flowing along a southerly course and British ships plying the waves, few local complaints rose to the surface. In addition to military sloops and schooners, no fewer than fifteen private vessels traversed the waters of the Great Lakes.45 During the ensuing years, the British merchant marine expanded as wealthy merchants ordered ships built to augment their businesses.46 Certainly many smaller vessels also carried modest but no less significant cumulative quantities of goods. British officials monitored this commerce to prevent shortfalls in the King’s Stores, especially since British garrisons continued to supply large numbers of J. G. Simcoe to William Irvine, October 5, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 98. 42 Russell Bissell to J. G. Simcoe, October 9, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 100. 43 The Duke of Portland to J. G. Simcoe, May 20, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 14. 44 J. G. Simcoe to the Duke of Portland, May 20, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 15. 45 J. G. Simcoe to the Committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 69. 46 Articles of Agreement Between John Askin, Esquire, and William Daly, Ship Carpenter, November 9, 1798, in Milo Milton Quaife, ed., The John Askin Papers, vol. 2 (Detroit: Detroit Library Commission, 1928–31), 152–3. 41

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Native American refugees. According to the third article of the Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Trade (Jay’s Treaty), “All Goods and Merchandise whose Importation . . . shall not be entirely prohibited, may freely, for the purposes of Commerce, be carried” across the borders.47 Technically, duties could be applied, but Upper Canadian officials hesitated to do so because of the benefits free trade brought them. When Parliament approved the treaty, Kingston merchant Richard Cartwright acknowledged that he found it hard “to determine” the implications of this new treaty, but he believed that “in a commercial Point of View” Upper Canadians “shall be Gainers.”48 Time proved him correct. Through the late 1790s, no large American mercantile houses affected the economy of the Lakes region like those in Upper Canada, and British commerce continued to flow primarily along the Laurentian corridor.49 Beginning in 1800, Canadian goods entering the United States had an import duty assessed.50 The tariff failed to affect trade except to expand smuggling, which continued even after Congress passed the Embargo Act of 1807 in response to British and French restrictions on American commerce with those nations.51 Unlike in other borderland areas where the potential for government enforcement was weak, as in northern Maine, the federal and Upper Canadian governments held greater potential to regulate border trade around Lake Erie because of the tendency of traders to channel their activity to the ends of the lake where carriage was easier and less fraught with peril, but also where the military maintained a relatively concentrated presence.52 Although smuggling continued throughout the period, evolving Canadian merchant frustrations suggest the success the United States had in providing some regulation, especially as the Jefferson and Madison administrations implemented stringent policing of customs houses.53 Indeed, Montreal merchants endorsed the government’s plan to construct a road to Lake Huron specifically because it would allow them to circumvent American customs officials.54 Not “Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation,” in David Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America, vol. 2 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1931–48), 247. 48 Richard Cartwright to Mr. T. L. Palsgraaff, October 18, 1796, in Richard A. Preston, ed., Kingston before the War of 1812: A Collection of Documents (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1959), 206–7. 49 Richard Cartwright to Messrs. Geo. Davison & Co, London England, November 4, 1797, Kingston before the War of 1812, 208. 50 Act of March 2, 1799, ch. 22, 1 Stat., 637–9. 51 Jane Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), 58. 52 Joshua M. Smith, Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783–1820 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), 12. 53 For a discussion on administration policing of customs houses, see chapters 6 and 7 in Guatham Rao, “The Creation of the American State: Customhouses, Law, and Commerce in the Age of Revolution” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2008). 54 Memorial of the North West Co. respecting Indian traders to His Excellency Francis Gore, esquire, Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Upper Canada, &c. &c. &c., November 5, 1810, MPHC, 25: 273–4. 47

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until after the War of 1812 would the United States and Britain certify the ­bordered land by ­surveying the international boundary, a move which marked a more decisive set of initiatives to regulate the bordered land economically as well as politically.55 Farmers and merchants along the shores of Lake Erie felt the benefits of free trade quickly. By the spring of 1796, word of better prices on the southern side of the Lakes spread across Canadian settlements. In May, an American agent at the Canadian town of Gananoque, located on the northeastern shore of Lake Ontario, bought hundreds of barrels of flour to sell to the new American settlement at Oswegatchie, just over forty miles down the St. Lawrence River. Similar purchases took place at other locations along the northern shoreline. Farmers who did not suffer the ravages of the Hessian fly scourge that continued to plague the region frequently sold wheat and other agricultural ­products to American garrisons and settlements, where they expected to bargain “upon their own terms.” In addition to flies, drought and apparent shortages of grain hindered the fattening of hogs, reducing the readily available amount of pork for another year.56 Together these factors dramatically increased grain prices, a phenomenon one Kingston merchant estimated would last “for some time.”57 Even with rising prices, Britain took few measures to regulate the ­border trade beyond seizing contraband items.58 Peter Russell, who acted as lieutenant­governor of Upper Canada when Simcoe went on permanent leave, proposed more stringent measures to control American imports, including the establishment of customs houses and of duties equal to those set at ports of entry in Lower Canada. Through these measures Russell hoped to secure additional operational funds for his young province.59 During its session late in 1798, the Upper Canadian Executive Council investigated Russell’s proposal and commissioned a report by Robert Hamilton, which estimated that nearly £100,000 worth of trade passed through Upper Canada yearly. Rumors that the United States might impose duties on Canadian imports did not disturb Hamilton. According to him, so long as the balance of trade remained in Britain’s favor, the Canadian For an analysis of the problems establishing the U.S.-Canadian border, see Francis M. Carroll, A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783–1842 (University of Toronto Press, 2001). 56 John McGill to J. G. Simcoe, May 13, 1796, and John McGill to J. G. Simcoe, May 13, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 262, 263. 57 John McGill to J. G. Simcoe, July 18, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 336. 58 Minutes of the Executive Council, June 13, 1798, and Peter Russell to Hon. Mr. Chief Justice Elmsley, June 26, 1798, in E. A. Cruikshank and A. F. Hunder, eds., The Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell with Allied Documents Relating to His Administration of the Government of Upper Canada during the Official Term of Lieut.-Governor J. G. Simcoe while on Leave of Absence, vol. 2 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1932–5), 181, 194. 59 Peter Russell to John Elmsley, June 14, 1798, and Peter Russell to the Duke of Portland, July 17, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 183, 217–18. 55

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economy would benefit from the exchange.60 Goods transported cheaply to the northern Ohio country by way of the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes gave Upper Canada an advantage. The region’s economy, Hamilton argued, had “visibly increased by that Mutual and unrestrained Intercourse” and therefore “should be left unincumbered [sic] with Custom house Establishments & Restrictions.”61 The Executive Council concurred and decided against creating customs houses or altering import regulations for the moment.62 Not all Upper Canadians experienced benefits from this growing economy. Consumers in particular bore the price pinch in part caused by free trade, particularly the people of British Detroit during the winter of 1796 when the price of flour in the city quickly doubled to nearly £5 per hundred-weight. Because of shortages in Detroit and accounting discrepancies in Niagara, allegations of corruption and embezzlement emerged against some military officers.63 Faced with seeing his garrison and settlements near Detroit become “much distressed,” R. G. England ordered that all Canadian flour intended for American posts and settlements be stopped at Fort Miami and returned to Detroit. Although many merchants engaged in this trade, George McDougall became a primary target of the lieutenant colonel’s proclamation. British officials, like R. G. England, had few reasons to admire McDougall. Shortly after Fallen Timbers, McDougall began dealing with the new American forts. Because of his growing business with American officers and his privileged treatment at the Treaty of Greenville, many of Canadian colleagues, some of whom had been turned away by Anthony Wayne, held him in contempt. Upon returning to Detroit after the council, he faced sharp censure from his peers, to which he reportedly responded with a “swagger” and threatened to sue “any man who would dare defame him.”64 Although many merchants viewed him as a turncoat, many also probably felt pangs of jealousy toward his new lucrative business. R. G. England most likely saw a way to kill two birds with one stone – punish a disloyal citizen and secure provisions. Twelve miles The United States began imposing duties in Detroit during the late spring of 1800. Matthew Ernest as Inspector of the revenues to John Askin, May 2, 1800, Askin Papers, 2: 287. In 1795, Arthur St. Clair estimated that British trade in the Illinois Territory, flowing from Michilimackinac to the St. Lawrence River, amounted to nearly $300,000 (“or 1,500,000 livres”). Governor St. Clair to the Secretary of State, May 4, 1795, in Clarence Edward Carter, ed., Territorial Papers of the United States (hereafter TPUS), vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1934–75), 515–16. 61 Memorandum on Trade and Commerce by Robert Hamilton, September 24, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 266–7. 62 William Osgoode to Peter Russell, October 6, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 273–4. 63 See Lord Dorchester to J. G. Simcoe, April 11, 1796, John McNabb to Robert Pratt, May 19, 1796, and J. G. Simcoe to Lord Dorchester, May 23, 1796, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 241–2, 269–70, 273–4. 64 Edmund Burke to E. B. Littlehales, August 14, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 62–3. 60

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southeast of Fort Miami, British soldiers confiscated McDougall’s corn and flour. McDougall lashed back, describing this treatment as not “altogether legal.”65 Upper Canadian bureaucratic officials agreed, prompting E. B. Littlehales to rebuke England for engaging in the “illegal measure.”66 On June 1, Simcoe sent England a letter reminding him of Jay’s Treaty.67 To compensate McDougall, the lieutenant colonel was ordered to pay the trader the “usual price” for his flour.68 After this incident, McDougall expanded his business, becoming one of the most important subcontractors supplying forward American forts, even after the transfer of control of British forts to the Americans.69 Handover of the forts added new layers of complexity to the American supply network. Article two of the Jay Treaty stipulated that Britain remove all troops and relinquish all posts south of the Great Lakes in accordance with the Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the Revolutionary War.70 Despite an array of elaborate plans formulated by Wayne and others to supply these forts from the Ohio River, executing those plans proved more difficult than originally conceived. Wayne wanted to rely almost exclusively on water carriage to advance supplies, but this approach rested on the ability of contractors to furnish all supplies by the beginning of March so convoys could begin the journey when river levels rose from the spring rains.71 Not once during the 1790s had contractors demonstrated such timely fulfillment of requisitions. Logistical problems therefore remained an endemic component of the western military experience. For British officials, relinquishing the forts created an assortment of economic and military inconveniences. To fulfill the obligations stipulated in Jay’s Treaty, the British needed to evacuate their posts at Ontario (Oswego, New York), Niagara, Detroit, Michilimackinac, and Fort Miami. British officials and traders eager to maintain the fur trade needed to devise a way to draw Indian peltry north of the new borders. “The object,” wrote Dorchester, was “to form, within our Frontier a Rendezvous for the Indian Traders . . . where they meet Estimates of how much corn and flour were taken varied. One report cited 2,000-weight while another claimed it to be 4,000-weight. Major William Winston to Major General Anthony Wayne, March 2, 1796, William Winston Papers, CHS; E. B. Littlehales to R. G. England, April 29, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 252. 66 R. G. England to E. B. Littlehales, May 24, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 275. 67 J. G. Simcoe to R. G. England, June 1, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 285. 68 E. B. Littlehales to R. G. England, April 29, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 252. 69 Colonel James Francis Hamtramck to Major William Winston, June 9, 1796, and General Anthony Wayne to Major William Winston, September 5, 1796, William Winston Papers, CHS. 70 “Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation,” in Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America, 2: 246. 71 Anthony Wayne to Timothy Pickering, September 19, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 457. 65

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the Merchants . . . discharge past credits with their Peltries, and receive a fresh ­supply of goods for the ensuing winter.”72 In April 1796, British surveyors scouted sites near Michilimackinac along the shore of Lake Huron for a new post to compete with the Americans after the handover.73 Later that month, they established Post St. Joseph on the island of the same name, located where Lake Superior empties into Lake Huron. A similar approach was applied near Detroit and Niagara. As the handover neared, Detroit merchants petitioned the British government to purchase land from local tribes, specifically in the vicinity of Isle aux Bois Blanc.74 Already the government had begun construction of Fort Malden opposite Isle aux Bois Blanc in anticipation of the evacuation of Detroit.75 There, planners spent more than £267 to construct a council room to encourage Native Americans to trade and meet at the new post instead of Detroit.76 At Niagara, the British removed to the other side of the Niagara River, mirroring the American position.77 The same could not be said for Forts Miami and Ontario for which the British constructed no new forts. Instead, additional blockhouses and storehouses were erected at Newark (the site of Navy Hall, today Niagara-on-the-Lake) and Kingston to absorb the men and material of these dissolved forts.78 The transfer of forts from British to American control took place without incident during the summer of 1796. Within two weeks of the handover of Forts Miami and Detroit, the newly stationed garrisons lacked sufficient provisions to supply themselves and the large number of Native Americans living near Detroit. Refugee Indians who had relied upon British stores to supplement their diet now looked to American officials for aid. For “principles of Humanity as well as good policy,” Wayne advised, “we must feed them for the present.” To complicate matters further, troops instructed to go to Fort Michilimackinac lacked enough meat to make the journey.79 James O’Hare, a former quartermaster general who became an army contractor in 1796, wrote Lord Dorchester to the Duke of Portland, April 16, 1796, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 246. 73 George Beckwith to William Doyle, April 11, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 243. 74 J. G. Simcoe to Lord Dorchester, June 5, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 289. 75 Memorandum by Lieutenant Colonel Gother Mann, November 4, 1795, and R. G. England to J.  G. Simcoe, December 16, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 123, 159. 76 James Green to Hector MacLean, January 19, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 67. 77 J. G. Simcoe to the Duke of Portland, February 27, 1796, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 201. 78 Memorandum by Lieutenant Colonel Gother Mann, November 4, 1795, and R. G. England to J.  G. Simcoe, December 16, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 123. 79 Anthony Wayne to James McHenry, July 22, 1796, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 501–2. 72

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to Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe requesting that Upper Canada “grant a loan of pork” so the transfer of Michilimackinac could occur without delay. Simcoe approved this request but was uncertain where he might find surplus swine.80 Although the political transfer of Detroit occurred peacefully, a moderate degree of social and economic disruption followed it. The ouster of British officials and their votaries paved the way for former political and economic outsiders to rise in station. Modestly sized merchants and farmers saw the most potential in a new political order.81 R. G. England, like many of his peers, despised the “Honors conferred on some of my Acquaintances there,” adding that he did not “imagine that those new created Gentlemen will add much to the Society of Detroit.”82 England’s prediction was wrong. Acting territorial governor Winthrop Sargent appointed many French and British Upper Canadians to government positions including justices and sheriffs.83 One scholar argues that their participation resulted in the development of a hybrid jurisprudence system drawing on U.S. and British Canadian traditions.84 The social realignment of people in Detroit and its surrounding communities revealed the fluidity of national sentiments that accompanied economic opportunity. By fiat, merchants who intended to remain British subjects needed to submit their names to British commanders and swear allegiance to the crown.85 In Detroit, Loyalists occasionally circulated anti-American letters and raised strife in the streets.86 As Jane Errington argues, Upper Canadians generally understood that their world was a colonial project of both Britain and the United States resulting from the significant American population and economic ties bridging communities on both sides of the international boundary.87 Complementing Upper Canadian merchants bringing their business southward were American entrepreneurs who constructed grist and saw mills in several Canadian towns.88 But it was established merchants who already possessed the means to support the new American garrisons who benefited the most from this transfer of power. John Askin remained a loyal British merchant, but J. G. Simcoe to R. G. England, July 20, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 342. 81 James C. Freeman to John Askwith, October 20, 1795, Askin Papers, 1: 580–1. 82 General England to John Askin, April 24, 1797, Askin Papers, 2: 108 (original emphasis). 83 F. Clever Bald, Detroit’s First American Decade, 1796 to 1805 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1948), 56; William Wirt Blume, “Civil Procedure on the American Frontier: A Study of the Records of a Court of Common Pleas of the Northwest and Indiana Territories (1796–1805),” Michigan Law Review, vol. 56 (Dec. 1957), 163. 84 Blume, “Civil Procedure on the American Frontier,” 169. 85 J. Askin to D. W. Smith, August 26, 1797, Askin Papers, 2: 120. 86 Mathew Ernest (A Memorial or Petition from Several Magestrates [sic] &ca of Detroit) to Colonel Sargent, March 13, 1797, Askin Papers, 2: 114. 87 Errington, Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada, 5. 88 H. C. Pentland, “The Role of Capital in Canadian Economic Development before 1875,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne d’Economique et de Science politique, vol. 16 (Nov. 1950), 460. 80

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filled contracts that supported American garrisons in the region.89 Because he remained “on a very good footing” with key American administrators, they awarded him a license to operate a ferry across the Detroit River, which further facilitated the movement of goods from Upper Canada to the American garrison.90 Despite economic cohesion across the bordered land, shifting loyalties in Detroit appeared to shatter a sense of unity many British Canadians had constructed, one rooted in a Tory belief in social and political hierarchy. While many Upper Canadians accepted Americanization of the economy, they rejected republican values.91 British farmers and merchants especially found the lure of American business attractive. Because northerly American forts and settlements could not readily supply themselves, British products filled the gaps. During the winter of 1798, American agents purchased surplus flour near Amherstburg to supplement deficiencies.92 As the United States and France threatened each other with war during that summer, Canadian farmers and merchants refrained from selling their corn and flour, hoping that they could exact higher prices from American agents.93 War did not come to pass, but Upper Canadian farmers and merchants celebrated the construction of a larger number of stills on the American side of the Lakes. By 1799, Americans distilled so much Upper Canadian grain into whiskey that the price of ingredients began to ratchet up.94 Reports from Presque Isle suggested nearly sixteen stills had been erected there by 1803 with many more at several other points along both shores of Lake Erie. Such consistent production of whiskey offered farmers a regular “vent” for their crops, especially wheat, corn, and barley.95 Prominent Queenston merchant Robert Hamilton assessed the cross-border trade positively. “The demand for Goods of all kinds from this Province,” he wrote in his memorandum on trade and commerce, “must further increase with the progress of the American settlements.” Upper Canada, more so than the western United States, would benefit See for example, Robert Hamilton to John Askin, October 28, 1798, and John Askin’s Agreemt to take no Advantage of the United States sending for what was lost from the Annette, October 13, 1799, Askin Papers, 2: 148, 255. 90 John Askin to Col. DePeyster, January 5, 1799, and Ferry Licence [sic] for John Askin Esquire, February 1, 1798, Askin Papers. 2: 129–30, 174. 91 David Mills, The Idea of Loyalty in Upper Canada, 1784–1850 (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 19, 23, 27; Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada, 27. 92 John McGill to James Green, February 22, 1798, and John McGill to James Green, March 21, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 100, 126. 93 John McGill to James Green, May 23, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 157. 94 John McGill to James Green, February 18, 1799, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 112–13. 95 Alex Grant to John Askin, May 17, 1803, Askin Papers, 2: 390; Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784–1841 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963), 51; February 1804, in Patrick C. T. White, ed., Lord Selkirk’s Diary, 1803–1804, A Journal of His Travels in British North America and the Northeastern United States (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1958), 234. 89

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from this trade because “the only outlet for all produce of the Settlements is by the river St. Lawrence.”96 For Simcoe and his replacement, Peter Russell, a strengthened economy on the American shore augured well for the colonial government in the long term. Not only would American agricultural competition drive down prices on British cattle and grains, but, Simcoe argued, silver paid to Americans in that transaction would not leave Canada. Here he highlighted an important issue considered by many merchants who looked to the future of the provincial economy. Merchants often complained about a dearth of specie, which some scholars have begun to question. By many accounts there seems to have been a significant quantity of coinage in the region, though certainly many land-poor settlers struggled to accumulate it.97 As economist Angela Redish has demonstrated, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and American gold coins circulated regularly.98 The Lasselle family business transactions offer a primer for the diversity of the region’s currencies. Although the Lasselles primarily kept their records in terms of “New York Currency” or the “Rate of New York,” British shillings, French livres, sous, and deniers, Spanish piastres, and American gold and silver coins appear throughout their receipts, often in combination with each other.99 When merchants therefore referenced a shortage of specie, what they meant was quality specie, not its quantity. Few coins retained their face value, most having been clipped or shaved over the years.100 Merchants depended upon quality currency, not only for payment of their debts, but also to extend lines of credit further inland.101 Given mercantilist logic of the day, if the circulating Robert Hamilton, Memorandum on Trade and Commerce, September 24, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 266. 97 At one point, Portland proposed implementing a “Corn Rent” rather than a “Rent in Money” because of the lack of specie. See, Peter Russell to Robert Prescott, May 26, 1798, and The Duke of Portland to Peter Russell, November 5, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 162, 301; John Askin to James & Andrew McGill, May 15, 1800, and Robert Nichols to John Askin, July 25, 1801, Askin Papers, 2: 293, 353; J. G. Simcoe to Henry Dundas, April 28, 1792, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 1: 143; J. G. Simcoe to George Rose, October 21, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 138–9. 98 See especially tables 1 and 2 in Angela Redish, “Why Was Specie Scarce in Colonial Economies? An Analysis of the Canadian Currency, 1796–1830,” Journal of Economic History, vol. 44 (Sept. 1984), 719, 720. 99 See for instance, Alexis Laparle statement of debt owed to Hyacinth Lasselle, June 26, 180, Jano. Pillet dit Moutait statement of debt owed Jacques & Francois Lasselle, June 16, 1801, Accounts of the Peltries received by Godfroy & Beaugrand from Monsieur Hyacinthe Lasselle, 1801–5, folder 3; Lereis Lagrave statement of debt owed to Antoine Marchal, February 2, 1803, folder 5, all in box 2, Lasselle Collection, ISL; Charles Bosseron to Antoine Marchal, November 3, 1807, folder 6; Gabriel Vaudry statement of debt owed to Hyacinthe Lasselle, January 17, 1808, Receipt of Pierre Bonneau for payment of debt to Antoine Lasselle, January 21, 1808, and Charles Rissley statement of debt to Anoine Marchal, January 20, 1808, folder 7, all in box 3, Lasselle Collection, ISL. 100 Redish, “Why Was Specie Scarce in Colonial Economies?” 717, 723. 101 Pentland, “The Role of Capital in Canadian Economic Development,” 459. 96

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currencies, particularly quality coinage, went to the United States, Upper Canada might suffer from depleted specie and credit. As long as American consumers cycled quality specie back into Upper Canada and not away from the southern littoral, the northern United States settlements remained, in Simcoe’s eyes, an extension of that colonial economy. Although American traders – who might drain provincial currency – arrived in Upper Canada from as far away as the New England states, Simcoe seems to have dismissed their presence as significant enough to affect Upper Canadian dominance in regional trade.102 More frequent than business from New England was that from the midAtlantic states, which, while modest, was noteworthy. A rough, semicontiguous road from Niagara to Detroit facilitated east–west trade. Missionary David Zeisberger, who lived on the road where it passed through the Moravian settlement of Fairfield, could not help but notice the growing traffic that brought scores of “White people” to what had been, prior to the end of the war, an area relatively isolated from white Candadians. “Hardly a day passes that some or more do not come here.”103 He attributed the change to the comparatively high cost of water conveyance between the Detroit and Niagara, caused in part by an expensive portage around Niagara Falls, which was controlled by four large merchant firms.104 At the local level, this road also eased transportation for smaller traders who looked to extend their narrow businesses. The Moravian community benefited from its trade with neighboring settlements and Detroit, which was why it worked to maintain and improve the road, even going so far as to construct a bridge.105 Local efforts such as this would have encouraged greater use of the route. For Americans living in New York and Pennsylvania, this Upper Canadian road eased costs of transportation to Detroit. By traveling north to Niagara and then southwest to Detroit, mid-Atlantic merchants and drovers avoided the burden of moving man and beast over the craggy Appalachians to Pittsburgh. Zeisberger recorded one of the first Americans he saw pass along the road in early March 1796, a lawyer who had purchased land in Detroit.106 Others soon followed, including three New York City merchants in December who bought corn along the way with the intent of selling it in food-strapped Detroit.107 The following summer, men driving cattle from Wyoming (later, Wilkes-Barre), Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada, 37. May 16, 1797, in David Zeisberger, Diary of David Zeisberger: A Moravian Missionary among the Indians of Ohio, vol. 2, trans. and ed. Eugene F. Bliss (St. Clair Shores, MI: Scholarly Press, 1972), 483. 104 October 2, 1795, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 422; Bruce G. Wilson, The Enterprises of Robert Hamilton: A Study of Wealth & Influence in Early Upper Canada, 1776–1812 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1983), 71. 105 See road work done during December 3–15, 1792, and January 2–9, 1798, and bridge building January 13 and 30–1, 1797, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 289–90, 471, 474, 510–1. 106 March 1, 1796, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 439. 107 December 19, 1796, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 467. 102 103

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Pennsylvania stopped on their way to Detroit.108 This early western trade helped inspire the construction of a series of privately constructed short canals from 1795 to 1797 through upstate New York to link Lake Ontario with the Hudson River.109 Notwithstanding these examples, it would be unfair to characterize the direction of trade as exclusively east to west. Detroit merchants explored trade to Albany and beyond as merchants and itinerant traders took advantage of market opportunities in both western towns and isolated farms.110 The building of the Erie Canal nearly twenty years later elaborated on these earlier economic connections while shifting a portion of regional commerce from the St. Lawrence River to New York City. Until the onset of the canal era, rivers, lakes, and roads served as primary avenues for the western trade in the United States and Canada. By the middle of the 1790s, river complexes, especially the Ohio-Mississippi and St. Lawrence, undoubtedly stood as the preeminent highways to and from the West. After Wayne’s campaign, the federal government began to invest in western infrastructure, even more so than the empire did in British Canada. The military constructed and improved roads and built bridges, “some of them very large,” to several posts in the northern Ohio country.111 Because the military played such a key role in road development, westerners typically identified Canadian and American government roads as “military roads,” even when the term mischaracterized the roads’ original construction or their use.112 At the turn of the nineteenth century, several types of common roads existed in the American and Canadian West. Ordinary rural roads linked farms to their local town centers. Individual farmers, their neighbors, and at times, their communities hacked and hewed these slap-dash roads to carry crops and domestic manufactures to market, merchant, and mill. In some cases, a cleared path with surveyor stakes might be the only evidence of such a road.113 Because farmers wished to devote most of their energies to their own pursuits, they committed little time to road upkeep. As a result, simple roads frequently reverted back to July 7, 1797, and September 20, 1797, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 489, 495. Albert Perry Brigham, “The Great Roads across the Appalachians,” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, vol. 37 (1905), 324. 110 September 24, 1797, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 495; Brian S. Osborn, “Trading on a Frontier: The Function of Peddlers, Markets, and Fairs in Nineteenth-Century Ontario,” Canadian Papers in Rural History, vol. 2 (1980), 59–82. 111 James Wilkinson to Major Henry Burbeck, June 7, 1796, Andrew Marschalk to Jon Mills, February 12, 1796, and Andrew Marschalk to J. Haskell, March 18, 1796, Northwest Territory Collection, WLC. 112 Harold L. Nelson, “Military Roads for War and Peace  – 1791–1836,” Military Affairs, vol. 19 (Spring 1955), 3; Minutes of the Executive Council, November 24, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 323; Minutes of the Executive Council, March 9, 1799, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 137. 113 Thomas F. McIlwraith, “The Adequacy of Rural Roads in the Era before Railways: An Illustration from Upper Canada,” in Graeme Wynn, ed., People, Places, Patterns, Processes: Geographical Perspectives on the Canadian Past (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1990), 197. 108 109

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wilderness if settlers moved elsewhere or if areas along the path went unsettled for some time.114 Only when severe ruts and overgrowth made these routes impassible did farmers clear them.115 Although these so-called roads might be best described as bridle paths, they fulfilled the expectations of a road for contemporary residents because of their capacity to economically and politically bind individuals to their communities and communities to each other. Although merchants who required the use of wagons and carriages or who came from eastern or European cities often complained about the quality of simple roads, evidence suggests that western farmers had different standards and found these paths remarkably adequate for their purposes. This was especially true in Upper Canada, where farmers waited until winter so they could use sleighs to transport their crops whenever possible rather than contend with impassable, muddy roads.116 In addition to rural roads, privately funded turnpikes carried commerce. Although fewer in number than country roads, corporately built roads provided important linkages between larger communities. In some cases, settlers raised money through private subscription to complete them.117 The Niagara Canada Constellation announced in September 1799 that settlers in Oxford, “being aware of the importance of roads in raising the value of property, early set about to open and extend them.” They raised money “relying on the patriotism of . . . neighbours and gentlemen in other parts of the province” to cut and bridge a road approximately twenty-five miles long.118 Designers applied more sophisticated construction techniques to these roads than farmers did to their rural roads, but poor management and limited funds typically made them only marginally better. Even famed corduroy roads required constant maintenance as logs rotted, heaved in frost, and fell into disrepair from general use. Planners made these roads wider than country roads to attract usage by merchants and emigrants. But because owners required tolls, yeomen incurred additional expenses by using them.119 Some speculators constructed roads to enhance the value of their land warrants. In March 1796, Ebenezer Zane petitioned Congress to build a road that would connect Wheeling, Virginia to two growing markets in the Ohio Valley. The road led to the Scioto River, near present-day Chillicothe, where it forked. One spur continued to a spot across from Limestone, Kentucky, where travelers could take a ferry across the river to another road that carried travelers and merchandise to the heart of the Bluegrass Region. The second road from Edwin G. Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada (Toronto: Ontario Publishing Co., 1933), 507. Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 15–6. 116 McIlwraith, “Adequacy of Rural Roads in the Era before Railways,” 207–8; Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada, 510. 117 Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada, 509. 118 Canada Constellation (Niagara), September 13, 1799, quoted in Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada, 513. 119 Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 17. 114 115

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the Scioto proceeded to Fort Washington and Cincinnati. For his efforts, Zane announced, he wanted no “compensation for his trouble, nor any reimbursement of his expenses,” except to have his land warrants fall along the proposed route.120 On May 17, 1796, Congress approved an act granting Zane three tracts of land no larger than one square mile each on the Muskingum, Hockhocking, and Scioto Rivers. The road passed through those grants and ferries were soon thereafter established at the river crossings.121 Zane completed the road – Zane’s Trace – during the next two years. In Upper Canada, the North-West Company paid to improve a road to Michilimackinac, which it did slowly from 1799 to 1812, to benefit its fur-trading interests there.122 Seeking to develop their own economies, individual states also sponsored initiatives to fund the construction of roads and improve navigation of their rivers. During the 1780s and 1790s, the heart of the Kentucky economy beat in the Bluegrass. But before the state began financing such projects, few routes easily carried goods to market. Transportation to the north became increasingly important as the Indian wars bolstered Kentucky’s economy. Roads constructed to Cincinnati and the clearing of navigable rivers made transportation easier, especially compared to country roads. In fact, extensive projects for transporting goods north preceded those designed to carry goods and emigrants along an east–west axis.123 But these roads also proved crucial because they complemented seasonal river travel that depended on winter run-off and rains during the spring and autumn. During these periods, many roads became hazardous or impassable because of the mud. Conversely, during dry summers and frozen winters, rivers ran too low while roads hardened. Between river and land routes, the Ohio Valley ensured transportation routes less dependent on seasonal weather patterns.124 Kentucky residents hoped that diverse means to reach their state would stimulate emigration and trade in general.125 After Ohio became a state, it too funded a number of roads to integrate its various communities. In a flurry of activity between 1802 and 1806, the state had roads surveyed and lain out to connect larger towns shaped by federal involvement in the West such as Cincinnati, Dayton, Marietta, and Limestone, Kentucky, while also developing a transportation matrix that included scores of smaller, aspiring towns. For this work, Ohio paid individuals to survey, serve as commissioners, and cut and clear roads. Although some of these individuals likely were settlers clearing roads to their lots, other entrepreneurial fellows Petition to Congress by Ebenezer Zane, March 25, 1796, TPUS, 2: 551. Act of May 17, 1796, ch. 28, 6 Stat., 27. 122 Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada, 515. 123 See Chapter 2. 124 Louis C. Hunter, “Studies in the Economic History of the Ohio Valley: Seasonal Aspects of Industry and Commerce before the Age of Big Business, The Beginnings of Industrial Combination,” Smith College Studies in History, vol. 19 (Oct. 1933–Jan. 1934), 24–5. 125 Stuart’s Kentucky Herald, July 14, 1795, 3, and October 25, 1796, 5; Lowell H. Harrison, ed., “A Letter Concerning Economic Conditions in Kentucky in 1802,” RKHS, vol. 53 (1955), 259. 120 121

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supplemented their income with regular work for the state. Depending on the length of the road and difficulty of the terrain, road hewers received varying wages. For instance, William Keyes earned $80 for clearing five miles of road whereas Abraham Evans received $173.50 for another only six and one-eighth miles long.126 State-funded projects in Ohio, Kentucky, and beyond complemented federal efforts to shape transportation and settlement in the region. Scholars have appropriately demonstrated that a number of forces hindered the implementation of a national plan for internal improvements, including the development of national parties and lingering concerns about concentrating such power in the federal government.127 Despite this limitation, Congress and the executive managed to create piecemeal – directly and indirectly, conscientiously and by accident  – a national transportation and communication infrastructure that bound together local, regional, and national interests.128 Through ferry licenses, federal officials encouraged settlement and trade. Many western roads often crossed rivers difficult to ford except during dry seasons. To facilitate the movement of people while also regulating the service, the territorial government issued ferry licenses. Some of the first applications came from men who lived in places like Cincinnati, Ohio and Limestone, Kentucky, where large numbers of people and goods regularly crossed the Ohio River. Additional ferries, especially in Hamilton and Washington counties, reflected an uninterrupted set of economic connections binding the two states. Others conveyed people and goods across the Muskingum, Scioto, Great Miami, and Little Miami Rivers, where they intersected post roads.129 By the first decade of the nineteenth century, settlers in Indiana also petitioned federal territorial officials, in this case Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison, to approve ferries and wagon roads to ease transportation and emigration.130 Western settlers and entrepreneurs alike understood that the federal government remained an active agent in demographic and economic growth of the region. The Roads/Financial Records folder of the Edward Tiffin Papers contains receipts described in this paragraph. See folder 12, box 1, Edward Tiffin Papers, OHS; Disbursement Authorization for William Small, January 30, 1806, folder 5, box 1, Thomas Kirker Papers, OHS. 127 Larson, “Bind the Republic Together,” JAH, 74 (Sept. 1987), 363–87; Stephen Minicucci, “Internal Improvements and the Union, 1790–1860,” Studies in American Political Development, vol. 18 (Fall 2004), 160–85. 128 Stephen Minicucci, “The Cement of Interest: Interest-Based Models of Nation-Building in the Early Republic,” Social Science History, vol. 25 (Summer 2001), 247–74. 129 See ferry licenses issued by the territorial governors, TPUS, 3: 293, 366, 436–7, 439, 444, 445, 446, 455, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 470, 471, 479, 480, 483, 484, 493, 499, 509, 516, 517, 518, 519, 522. 130 Recommendation of Eneas McAllister to Keep a Ferry opposite the mouth of the Green River, April 9, 1805, folder 5, and Petition of residents four miles below Clarksville on the north bank of the Ohio River to William Henry Harrison for a wagon road, May 16, 1806, folder 6, box 2, series 5, William H. English Family Papers, IHS. 126

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Although rarely identified in the sphere of internal improvements, the Post Office became one such instrument for national integration that transcended national political and ideological differences while also serving congressional interests to bring federal patronage to their constituencies. Historians Richard Kielbowicz and Richard John reveal the important role the Post Office played during the first half of the nineteenth century in helping ground Americans’ “sense of place in an expansive nation” and fostering the abstract emotional connections between community and state that helped produce an “imagined community” of the nation-state through its distribution of print media.131 Beyond the ideational affects of the Post Office, that bureaucracy helped fortify, and at times created wholesale, a transportation infrastructure that strengthened the early western economy and encouraged the integration of the West into the national state. Some early post roads accomplished the impressive task of linking the Ohio Valley to the east. One route began in Pittsburgh, went west to Wheeling, Virginia, and then traveled southwest to Limestone (Maysville), Kentucky, with the last leg of the road ending at Fort Washington.132 But other post roads made valuable connections between growing town centers, first primarily in the Bluegrass Region. Narrow and rough roads minimized cost and allowed foot, horse, and sulky travel.133 The initial jagged web of post roads, constructed between 1792 and 1794, connected Bardstown, Danville, Frankfort, and Lexington to the Ohio River via another post road to Limestone (Maysville).134 As towns and the demand for mails grew, so did congressional designations of post roads. In 1805, Postmaster General Gideon Granger recommended to the Senate that post roads in Ohio and Kentucky be improved to better connect the West to Pennsylvania and Virginia.135 In 1800, Richmond, Washington, Lancaster, Versailles, Shelbyville, and Louisville entered a federally funded transportation web. By 1802, post roads eased commerce between these Kentucky towns as well as Marietta, Chillicothe, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Vincennes in Indiana Territory. Post roads even linked communities as far away as Kaskaskia and Cahokia on the Mississippi River. Likewise, the web of John M. Murrin, “A Roof without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity,” in Richard R. Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward Carlos Carter, eds., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 346; Richard B. Kielbowicz, News in the Mail: The Press, Post Office, and Public Information, 1700–1860s (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 4–5, 180; Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 112; Richard R. John, “Taking Sabbatarianism Seriously: The Postal System, the Sabbath, and the Transformation of American Political Culture,” Journal of the Early Republic (hereafter JER), vol. 10 (Winter 1990), 517–67. 132 Act of May 8, 1794, ch. 23, 1 Stat., 355. 133 Kielbowicz, News in the Mail, 46–7. 134 Act of February 20, 1792, ch. 7, 1 Stat., 233; Act of May 8, 1794, ch. 23, 1 Stat., 355, 356. 135 “Mail Stages or Covered Wagons,” December 28, 1803, American State Papers, Post Office (hereafter Am. St. Pap.: PO), 1: 29. 131

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roads extended from the Bluegrass south into Tennessee, drawing that ­market into the commercial embrace of the Ohio Valley.136 The importance of the post roads cannot be understated. In 1810, one could travel thousands of miles to every major city and town from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi River, from Dayton, Ohio, to Nashville, Tennessee, and visit hundreds of smaller towns on and out of the way without ever stepping off a post road. By 1815, 2,158 miles of post roads connected 85 post offices in Kentucky and 2,778 miles of road linked 134 post offices in Ohio. To the west, longer roads reached isolated settlements. Approximately 609 miles of post roads extended to only sixteen post offices in Indiana Territory, and 388 miles did so for a mere nine postal centers in Illinois Territory.137 Post roads became especially important in the Ohio Valley because of the inconsistency of river travel, which made their use more necessary and efficient than in other parts of the country, even after the spread of steamboats.138 The pattern of post roads in the West further illustrates this point. Whereas postal routes connecting communities in eastern states primarily ran north– south with few east–west crossroads, in the West, east–west routes became much more common. “Cross-roads are now established so extensively,” hyperbolized Postmaster Joseph Habersham in 1801, “that there is scarcely a village, court house or public place of any consequence but is accommodated with the mail.”139 The federal government, fearful of western secession because of a lack of adequate economic connections between the regions, installed east– west post roads as a means to foster literal and abstract connections to eastern markets and the government in Philadelphia. Federal fiscal resources supported a greater number of expensive projects to be constructed than was permitted by meager purses of state and local governments. The use of federal funds for internal improvements also freed state and local governments from that responsibility and allowed them to allocate their money to other uses. The Constitution provided Congress the power to establish post offices and post roads without articulating how that might be accomplished. During the 1790s, Congress expended more energy asserting its power to define post roads and protecting that prerogative from incursions by the executive branch than delineating a bureaucratic structure to follow. As a result, a combination of factors – past practice, fiscal conservatism, geography, and idiosyncratic leadership Act of April 23, 1800, ch. 32, 2 Stat., 43–4; Act of March 3, 1801, ch. 35, 2 Stat., 126; Act of May 3, 1802, ch. 48, 2 Stat., 190–1; Act of March 26, 1804, ch. 34, 2 Stat., 276; Act of April 24, 1806, ch. 55, 2 Stat., 409; Act of April 23, 1808, ch. 56, 2 Stat., 491; Act of April 28, 1810, ch. 30, 2 Stat., 584–5. 137 “Statement of the Number of Post Offices in Each State, Produce of Postages, &c for Six Months,” February 28, 1815, Am. St. Pap.: PO, 1: 48. 138 Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 149. 139 Joseph Habersham, n.d., 1801, Book K, 343, Letter Books of the Postmaster General, quoted in Wesley Everett Rich, The History of the United States Post Office to the Year 1829 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924), 92. 136

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of the postmasters general – produced a peculiar mix of centralized authority within a highly decentralized bureaucracy. Even by 1798, only six people – the postmaster general, an assistant postmaster general, and four clerks  – managed the bureaucracy at the national level. The rest of the work fell to the hundreds of postmasters and post riders responsible for the conveyance of the mails as well as administration of local offices. Although postmasters general made many decisions at the national level, including hiring of postmasters and contracting mail delivery, local postmasters advised on existing and potential contracts, decided who would provide supplies to the local office, and solved the daily challenges of the business. This multilayered system gave rise to and coped with so many problems that in 1798 even Postmaster General Joseph Habersham found it difficult “to detail the particulars.”140 This admixture of centralized and diffused authority positioned the Post Office to respond to Federalist and Democratic-Republican impulses for a national political economy over the long term. So long as postmasters accounted for their expenses, local post offices participated in a Republicanfueled vision of an expansive West that left settlers linked to commercial and political channels, thereby subduing Federalist critics. In the Ohio Valley, residents desired easy access to the mails to ensure participation in the market and national politics. A decade before becoming postmaster general, Return Meigs, Jr. articulated such an expansionist blueprint for a post office that would “reach both to the U.S. and the merchants of the Western Country.”141 Federalists could be assured that town- and city-centered post offices might serve an expanding merchant-based economy that met national goals through political patronage that strengthened local ties to that national state.142 Later, Jeffersonian Republicans superimposed their own lines of patronage to the detriment of Federalist loyalists.143 Thus while Federalists and Republicans approached this system of national improvements differently, both parties favored an emphasis on regional development as a means to bind the republic together.144 U.S. Const. art. 1, § 8, cl. 7; Kielbowicz, News in the Mail, 38–9; “Remarks respectfully submitted to Congress, by the Postmaster General, on the project of ‘An act to establish the Post Office of the United States,’” Mar. 1798, in Am. St. Pap.: PO, 1: 17; Postmaster General to Charles Greene, May 26, 1797, TPUS, 2: 608. 141 Kielbowicz, News in the Mail, 5; Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 122; Return Meigs to Thomas Worthington, February 2, 1804, box 2, folder 6, Papers of Thomas Worthington, OHS. 142 Andrew R. L. Cayton, “The Contours of Power in a Frontier Town: Marietta, Ohio, 1788– 1803, JER, vol. 6 (Summer 1986), 106; Cayton, “Radicals in the ‘Western World,’” 91. Cayton characterizes William Henry Harrison as often more loyal to his local power networks than the national government. Andrew R. L. Cayton, Frontier Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 228, 232. 143 Cayton, “The Contours of Power in a Frontier Town,” 125. 144 Minicucci, “‘Cement of Interest,’” 267; Larson, “‘Bind the Republic Together,’” 370. 140

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Because Federalists controlled the national government during the last decade of the eighteenth century, they shaped the initial federal bureaucracy to benefit market-oriented citizens. Alexander Hamilton, who had a heavy hand in shaping early national fiscal policy, understood the potential of post roads to integrate the young country by providing an infrastructure for “the cheapness of transporting and the facility of obtaining raw materials, fuel and provisions.” In early drafts of his “Report on Manufactures,” Hamilton deployed heady invocations of Adam Smith’s economic theory on the value of roads binding and enhancing both “country” and “town,” though he clearly departed from any notion of laissez-faire attributed to Smith. Although much of this rhetoric did not appear in his final 1791 “Report,” Hamilton nevertheless had begun to articulate the latent potential for urban and rural spaces evident in early nationalist visions of the Post Office.145 As Congress debated postal policy during the first years of the 1790s, it came to no clear agreement on how best to alter the Post Office to meet the needs of citizens. Historian Richard John has shown that early congressional debates on postal policy wrestled with a constitutional question. Although congressional representatives generally agreed that Congress had the power to determine the pathway of the major postal route linking the states, many believed that the states should reserve the power to determine intrastate postal routes. As a result, even a primary interstate postal line, platted to run north to south through the original states, became contentious. Legislators from western districts of many states wanted it to run closer to their counties while those representing more heavily populated and merchant-invested eastern counties did not want to see their access to the mails diminished. Congress resolved these problems in the Post Office Act of 1792, in which it granted itself the power to determine all post roads, thereby eliminating the need for a singular, highly contentious route.146 This broad approach to mail service provided a basis for creating cross routes and post roads to the West, which could not have occurred under previous legislation. Although quickly dismissed by congressional representatives and the postal bureaucracy after the passage of the 1792 act, another long-standing debate revolved around the colonial-era notion that postal routes needed to be profitable. Many people worried that the national legislature would favor post Much of this language derived from Tench Coxe’s report as demonstrated by Jacob Cooke. Jacob E. Cooke, “Tench Coxe, Alexander Hamilton, and the Encouragement of American Manufactures,” WMQ, vol. 32 (July 1975), 371–80; “Alexander Hamilton’s First Draft of the Report on the Subject of Manufactures,” “Tench Coxe’s Draft of the Report on the Subject of Manufactures,” and “Alexander Hamilton’s Third Draft of the Report on the Subject of Manufactures,” in Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke, eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 10 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–87), 20, 39, 116. For the Smith quote, see book I, chapter 11, part I, in Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1998; rpt. 1776), 173. 146 John, Spreading the News, 45. 145

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roads only in heavily populated eastern areas where profitability was more ­certain, but not in western districts where scattered populations escalated costs. Congressional action mitigated these concerns. Representatives appealed to their constituents by authorizing initially unprofitable post roads in anticipation of demographic and economic growth. Postmasters general who closely studied the issue largely supported the political decisions made by congressmen. In 1796, Postmaster General Joseph Habersham recommended that the federal government spend less money on post routes in the East in favor of “remote” areas in the West. He noted that “the aid of public roads will be a public benefit in all its [sic] respects of such magnitude as cannot escape the observations of every legislator.” The use of a public road would boost the population of an outlying area, eventually making “unproductive” post routes profitable. Habersham’s successor, Gideon Granger, continued to defend this model. “The increase of our population, agriculture and commerce,” he argued in 1803, “and the consequent increase of intercourse between our citizens, and of travel to and from different States, and distant parts of the same State,” among other factors, “evinced the propriety of giving every reasonable encouragement to . . . establishing and supporting regular lines of public carriage.” The previous year, he had argued that it was “highly useful to the public” to construct post roads that would “be eventually profitable to the funds of the Post Office.” Nevertheless, lingering debates on the propriety of losing money on many western post roads periodically led postmasters general to defend unproductive routes against critics.147 Some post routes in the Ohio Valley did not provide the immediate spark of growth at their termini that their sponsors anticipated. Still, enough settlement occurred on post roads that population projections were enough to justify unprofitable offices in remote places. New settlers frequently demonstrated their preference for new and improved roads by homesteading near the transportation grid.148 Westerners quickly correlated road development with settlement patterns and directed arguments that reflected this insight to their legislators. When Adamsville resident John Willis wrote Winthrop Sargent in 1798, he tried to convince him that if a post office were approved for his town, then the newly constructed road would outshine the more well-known route initiated by Ebenezer Zane.149 When their calls went unanswered, community leaders feared for the future. In another instance, because the citizens of Canton, Ohio failed to have a post road brought to their town in 1812, they viewed themselves as “cut off in great measure” from the economic and Ibid.; Joseph Habersham to George Kline, March 4, 1796, roll 5, Letters Sent by the Postmaster General, 1789–1836 (hereafter LSPG), RG 28, NARA; “Mail Stages or Covered Wagons,” December 28, 1803, Gideon Granger to James Jackson, March 23, 1802 (original emphasis), and “Revision of the Post Office Laws,” February 22, 1810, Am. St. Pap.: PO, 1: 29, 22, 42. 148 James Patten to David Patten, April 21, 1799, James Patten Papers, WLC. 149 John L. Wills to Winthrop Sargent, February 9, 1798, Northwest Territory Collection, WLC. 147

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demographic benefits they expected such a road to provide their community. Although a post road ran south through Canton to the state capital, it did not enable the town’s inhabitants to exploit the economic advantages associated with expansionism. As John Sloane pointed out, “immigration to our state has for the most part been from east to west.” Sloane and others understood that post roads and post offices not only supported the mails, but also represented linchpins to economic expansion. For locals, the small profits the federal agency derived from a post road seemed of little importance in contrast to the gains a local community could achieve.150 Like the later canals and railroads that linked the Ohio Valley to a national economic and social network, early post roads increasingly bound the region to the rest of the country. The success of post roads in attracting settlers and improving the western economy led the federal government to expand it efforts in the region. On May 1, 1802, Congress legislated that the secretary of the treasury open “such roads within the territory northwest of the river Ohio, as in his opinion will best serve to promote the sales of the public lands in [the] future.” Within two months, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin arranged for the opening of six roads in the eastern Ohio Territory. The first road linked Steubenville and Chillicothe, while a second connected the salt springs on the Scioto to the first. Another ran from opposite Grave Creek (present-day Moundsville, West Virginia) to Lancaster and the Scioto River. The fourth tied Marietta to the growing communities near Wheeling. The last two led from Steubenville: one to the area around present-day Youngstown and the other to the northwest corner of the Seven Ranges. To encourage emigration as well as trade, Gallatin ordered that three roads emanating from Steubenville should be “20 feet wide at least, fit for a wagon with a common load to travel.” The government offered as much as $6 per mile to individuals willing to cut the roads and Gallatin inquired among prominent merchants about other roads which might be opened to “most unite general utility to the Inhabitants, and best promote the sale of lands.”151 The help offered by the post office and the secretary of the treasury to build western roads reflected the federal government’s growing commitment to developing the West economically and politically. Despite these efforts, the federal government’s role should not be overstated. For the most part, the national government did not pay for the construction of post roads. Instead, Congress designated the title “post road” to existing routes. Still, to link communities where no path or road existed Malone, Opening the West, 71–2; John Sloane to Thomas Worthington, January 4, 1812, box 5, folder 1, Thomas Worthington Papers, OHS; Rich, The History of the Post Office to the Year 1829, 148–9. 151 Section 5, Act of May 1, 1802, ch. 44, 2 Stat., 180; Secretary of the Treasury to David Hodge, June 28, 1802, Secretary of the Treasury to the Register and Receiver of the Land Office at Cincinnati, June 28, 1802, Secretary of the Treasury to Rufus Putnam, June 26, 1802, TPUS, 3: 233–6; Albert Gallatin to Rufus Putnam, April 16, 1803, Rufus Putnam Papers, Marietta College Collection, OHS. 150

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and to bridge communities an extraordinary distance from each other, the ­federal ­government occasionally funded the creation or modification of roads. For instance, in 1806, Congress appropriated $6,000 each for roads cut from the Indian boundary established by the Treaty of Greenville in Ohio to the Mississippi River, and from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez in the Mississippi Territory. Because Congress elected to make them post roads, President Thomas Jefferson directed Postmaster General Gideon Granger – he thought the assignment “more properly [fell] into” Granger’s “department than any other”  – to “execute” them. Jefferson was willing to “re-open the military road” from Ohio to the Mississippi, “to alter it,” or “to make a new one.” Such projects, as well as the expansion of the National Road, encouraged westerners to look to Congress to appropriate money to aid in the proliferation of roads. For instance, in 1811, Benjamin Van Cleve attempted to make a case for federal appropriations for a road from Preble (west of Dayton, Ohio) to Vincennes in Indiana Territory.152 His work melded with those made by delegates from the neighboring territorial legislature to articulate a regional argument for the route. Nevertheless, direct spending on internal improvements remained relatively small compared to the federal government budget.153 Although most calls for financial aid, like Van Cleve’s, failed to receive assistance, westerners nonetheless viewed the national government as an instrument for development. Merchants especially identified post offices as a tool, and postmasters general conscientiously shaped a growing bureaucracy with them in mind. Timothy Pickering, who succeeded Samuel Osgood as postmaster general in 1791, “uniformly wish[ed] to afford every possible accommodation to that class of Citizens” because “almost all the productive correspondence thro the Post Office is in the Mercantile line.” The marriage between government and local economic leaders augmented the potential influence of merchants because they became not only representatives of an expanded federal presence throughout the country, but also purveyors of news. Augustine Davis, the postmaster of Richmond, Virginia, the initial launching point for mails to Kentucky before the Ohio River became a major postal channel, also edited the Virginian Gazette and Daily Advertiser (1790–7). Advertisements from the Post Office for new post riders regularly made their way into his newspaper. And as postmaster, Davis likely instructed post riders to deliver his newspapers, a “customary” and “free” practice until it came to end in 1793. Thereafter, post riders were no longer “bound to deliver newspapers to individuals.”154 Section 8, Act of Apr. 21, 1806, ch. 41, 2 Stat., 397; Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, July 12, 1806, Francis and Gideon Granger Papers, LOC; Benjamin Van Cleve to Thomas Worthington, August 31, 1811, Thomas Worthington Papers, OHS. 153 Minicucci, “Internal Improvements and the Union,” 162. 154 Timothy Pickering to Augustine Davis, February 25, 1792, roll 1, Timothy Pickering to John Scull, January 25, 1793, roll 2, Samuel Osgood to W. D. Horton, April 18, 1791, roll 1, LSPG, NARA. 152

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Competition for the position of local postmaster could be fierce. In 1805, John Hutt eyed the post held by Benjamin Tappan in Steubenville, Ohio. After Tappan became indebted to him, Hutt made the postmaster “promise to resign” his post as repayment of the debt. Although Tappan initially agreed to this arrangement, he later decided to repay the debt traditionally and keep his job as postmaster. Hutt flew into an outrage, “threaten[ing] to write the Post Master General” and even accused Tappan’s brother Edward of nepotism and corruption for foiling his scheme.155 Despite clear agendas and carefully nurtured relationships, an early adoption of postal responsibilities by members of the merchant class appeared to take place organically. For men whose livelihood rested largely on the vagaries of the marketplace, advance warning of disease, river levels, breaks in the supply chain, political unrest, and war could give them some ability to gain – or at least create an appearance of – control in their work and lives. Letters, newspapers, and other media contained such vital information. Timothy Pickering explained that “many gentlemen accept the office for the convenience of their own Correspondence and the Accomodation [sic] of their neighbours. They at the same time receive the freshest intelligence by the newspapers.” Because merchant stores especially served as a nexus for the community, they could offer the Post Office a ready clientele for post lines. This situation appealed to postmasters general and congressmen who wanted self-supporting and profitable routes. Merchants provided the quickest way to that end, leading postmasters general to solicit the advice of not only current postmasters but also merchants in the community for potential candidates to fill postmaster job openings.156 In the Ohio Valley, postmasters general and local officials hoped to employ such cooperation between the federal government and local business interests to bring greater stability and political ascendancy to new western governments. Mail to states traveled first to the capital and then to local post offices. This practice not only served to transmit political correspondence “along the great lines of Communication, to & from the Center”  – that is, Philadelphia and later Washington, DC – but also “to equalize among the Merchants of the several Capitals, the Chances of receiving commercial information.” From Ohio, Thomas Worthington successfully used his political associations in the Senate to have Chillicothe added as a “Post Town” in 1799. As a prominent speculator in the area, Worthington had a stake in moving the territorial capital from Cincinnati to Chillicothe, for which he traveled to Washington in 1800. As soon as the House of Representatives passed the bill making Chillicothe the seat of government, Virginia congressman John Brown advised Worthington Edward Tappan to Thomas Worthington, January 29, 1805, box 3, folder 1, Thomas Worthington Papers, OHS. 156 Lewis E. Atherton, The Frontier Merchant in Mid-America (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1971), 29–30; Timothy Pickering to Joseph Rogers, March 3, 1794, roll 3, Gideon Granger to the Postmaster of Marietta, August 5, 1802, roll 11, LSPG, NARA. 155

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that he should immediately work to find the “shortest & best roads” from Chillicothe “to all important points” in the Northwest Territory. By October, Rufus Putnam had begun collecting information on a possible road from Chillicothe to Cincinnati. In another instance, Kentucky governor Isaac Shelby wrote to Secretary of State Edmund Randolph about inconsistent mails in 1795, remarking that he wanted his constituents not only to receive “regular information of the transactions of the General Government” but also to have accessible communication with those “connected with them in business.” As the tools of business, namely correspondence and news, flowed through the arteries of government, mercantile interests grew increasingly bound to the long-term success of the states and the nation.157 Although Federalists tended to emphasize federal paternalism and authority while Republicans preached state and local autonomy, local and national participants in both parties recognized a recipe for national integration required both ingredients even if they used different measures.158 In the early West, the mails played a crucial role in long-distance communication. Because of the greater distances between communities compared to the East, mails proved a necessary tool to maintain family bonds, to forge and develop business relationships, as well as to gain valuable insight into events in the state and other parts of the country. An examination of all letters not franked leaving the post office in Hamilton, Ohio from October 9, 1804 through September 24, 1805 reveals that only about thirty-five percent went to locations within 100 miles, a radius that included Chillicothe. In contrast, a similar analysis of a post office in Durham, New Hampshire during the 1820s and 1830s found that “79 percent of the mail arriving and departing Durham originated in or was received in locations no farther than 80 miles away.” Whereas in the East, it seems “most mail came from or was sent to places just beyond the point at which it was still reasonable to communicate with someone face to face,” in the early West most mail traveled much greater distances.159 Return J. Meigs to B. Varnum, June 30, 1811, roll 16, Return J. Meigs to Henry Clay, ­December 11, 1811, roll 17, LSPG, NARA; James Ross to Thomas Worthington, February 7, 1799, box 1, folder 3, and Joseph Habersham to Thomas Worthington, March 2, 1799, box 1, folder 3, Thomas Worthington Papers, OHS; Andrew R. L. Cayton, Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780–1825 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1986), 71; John Brown to Thomas Worthington, May 2, 1800, box 1, folder 4, Thomas Worthington Papers, OHS; Rufus Putnam to Thomas Worthington, October 24, 1799, in William Henry Smith, ed., The St. Clair Papers: The Life and Public Service of Arthur St. Clair, vol. 2 (Cincinnati: Robert Clark, 1882), 471; Isaac Shelby to Edmund Randolph, March 14, 1795, box 3, Shelby Family Papers, LOC; Gideon Granger to the President of the United States, February 6, 1805, roll 13, LSPG, NARA. 158 Cayton, “Contours of Power in a Frontier Town,” 117, 120. 159 “Franked” letters, usually government correspondence, were sent without charge. Account of Mails Sent from the Post Office at Hamilton, Ohio, October 9, 1804–September 24, 1805, LOC; Michael S. Foley, “A Mission Unfulfilled: The Post Office and the Distribution of Information in Rural New England, 1821–1835,” JER, vol. 17 (Winter 1997), 627, 628. 157

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Extensive demands by the Post Office for labor and materials further enhanced interactions between community members and the federal government. Postmasters general appointed local postmasters at specific collection and distribution points. Contractors then submitted bids to the postmaster general on an annual basis with a contract typically going to the lowest offer. The price of a contract depended heavily upon the difficulty and distance of the route as well as the frequency of the mails’ travel along it. In 1810, the one-year contract for Chillicothe, Ohio to Frankfort, Kentucky, both capitals, cost $5,177; from Marietta to Cincinnati went for $3,000; and Wheeling, Virginia to Chillicothe paid $3,200. Less frequently traveled routes received much lower bids, such as Detroit to Post Miami ($500), and Zanesville, Ohio to Gnadenhutten, Ohio ($210). The contractors sometimes subcontracted to others who actually carried the mails.160 Because the federal government became an important consumer in the region, enterprising westerners had numerous opportunities to benefit from the coffers of the national state. Postmasters procured contracts to have offices constructed or to lease buildings. They purchased furnishings for offices, including desks, shelves, stoves, and other equipment, as well as office supplies such as paper, pens, ink, stamps, and heating wood. To meet transportation needs, postmasters acquired horses by purchasing or hiring them. For instance, in 1798 Benjamin Mullican received $200 for eighteen months use of his horse by post riders. When outfitting post riders, postmasters supplied portmanteaux, saddlebags, sulkies, and wagons to meet the demands of the route. If the mails traveled by water, they tapped into the burgeoning shipping industry, especially in Marietta, where vessels as large as the 400-ton square-rigged brig Western Trader were constructed and sent to destinations as far away as New Orleans, New York, and Liverpool.161 The Post Office joined the military as purchasers of vessels, though they tended to be small to moderately sized flatbottomed or keeled crafts.162 Once purchased, canoes and larger vessels needed to be outfitted with oars, setting poles, anchors, and laborers; postal crafts also required boxes with water-resistant oilcloths to protect letters and packages. For navigating a large keel boat for the Quartermaster’s Department from Fort Washington to Pittsburgh, boatmaster James Farlan and his six crewmates received $150.163 When any items on board were damaged, lost, or destroyed, Statement of all the Contracts which have been made in this Department during the preceding year, March 10, 1810, roll 16, LSPG, NARA; Beverley W. Bond, Jr., The Civilization of the Old Northwest: A Study of Political, Social, and Economic Development, 1788–1812 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1934), 384–5. 161 List of Ships Built in Marietta 1800–6, vol. 2, Hildreth Collection, Marietta Collection, OHS; May 28, 1806, John G. Stuart Journal, 1806, KHS; Archer B. Hulbert, “Western Ship-Building,” AHR, vol. 21 (July 1916), 723–5, 724n6. 162 Henry Dearborn to James Taylor, December 2, 1809, and James Taylor to Henry Dearborn, January 3, 1809, folder 1, box 2, Arthur G. Mitten Collection, IHS. 163 William Henry Harrison Account of the U.S. with seven men for navigating a large keel boat, the property of the United States, from Fort Washington to Pittsburgh . . . agreeable to the contract with the Quartermaster, October 18, 1799, box 1798–1819, U.S. History Papers, LL. 160

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postmasters often called on local businesses to repair them or manufacture replacements. Even though prices in the trans-Appalachian West tended to be higher than in the East, postal administrators accepted the additional expense, though begrudgingly at times. Timothy Pickering, for example, grouched that he had to approve $25 each for what he viewed as overpriced setting poles and anchors, but he did so uncompromisingly. When post office or military property of consequence began to show signs of wear or was no longer needed, the federal government sold it back into the local communities, making it a supplier as well as consumer in the region.164 Like most business owners, contractors sometimes tried to make a greater profit by cutting costs wherever possible. In Ohio, they at times employed young boys on canoes, though postmasters general eschewed this practice. In Kentucky and other places where the use of slave labor became common, African Americans occasionally carried the mail. Slaveholders condemned this practice for its subversive potential to blur racial categories and facilitate slave rebellion. Their protests coincided with campaigns in Kentucky to restrict the movement of slaves within the state generally. Together, Post Office employment (directly or via subcontracting) and its critique highlighted the ambiguous and fluid notion of citizenship, especially where it intersected with local conceptions of race and class.165 Attempts to exclude African Americans from the Post Office fit within a discourse that sought to define who belonged to the political community. While national in scope, the substance of the conversation derived from local social conditions and events. The debate resonated strongly in the Ohio Valley, where state laws wrote into the landscape a borderland between slavery and freedom and African Americans found themselves possessing ambiguous statuses ranging between free, quasi-free, and bound. Even on the northern side of the river, African American freedom did not translate into equality and citizenship. Whites on both sides of the river fiercely debated and physically enforced their understanding of the place of African Americans in society, while black men and women fought to define their rights and assert their participation within John Leslie Tevebaugh, “Frontier Mail: Illinois, 1800–1830” (M.A. thesis, University of Illinois, 1952), 18; Joseph Habersham to George Adams, October 12, 1798, roll 8, Joseph Habersham to William McKinley, November 16, 1798, roll 8, Gideon Granger to G. Green, February 10, 1810, roll 17, Joseph Habersham to George Adams, November 21, 1798, roll 8, Timothy Pickering to Isaac Craig, April 26, 1794, roll 3, Gideon Granger to the Postmaster at Pittsburgh, October 11, 1803, roll 12, Return J. Meigs to James Abbott, February 27, 1817, roll 19, LSPG, NARA; Henry Dearborn to James Taylor, May 9, 1809, folder 1 box 2, Arthur G. Mitten Collection, IHS. 165 Joseph Habersham to Charles Green, April 21, 1797, roll 6, Joseph Habersham to Isaac Gano, April 4, 1801, roll 10, LSPG, NARA; James Jackson to Gideon Granger, March 23, 1802, Am. St. Pap.: PO, 27; Juliet E. K. Walker, Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 22; Linda K. Kerber, “The Meanings of Citizenship,” JAH, vol. 84 (Dec. 1997), 833–54; Matthew Fry Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 22–31. 164

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the community. Questions of race, citizenship, and national community did not, however, reach a clear resolution before the Civil War and only partially so after it.166 Just as community members railed against Post Office racial policy when it diverged from local visions of a national political economy, so too did others cry foul when policies broke from their hopes for a moral government. When Congress formally mandated in 1810 that local post offices remain open “on every day on which a mail, or bag, or other packet or parcel of letters shall arrive,” several evangelical protestant groups protested what one historian terms a violation of their “moral geography of the Sabbath.” Beginning in the Ohio Valley and spreading nationwide, these organizations petitioned the federal government to prohibit the transportation of the mails and close post offices on Sundays, calling it not only a “violation of known and universally received precepts,” but also an “evident infringement of the laws . . . in this State.” Sabbatarians wanted the federal government to do more than create an economic community; they believed that it should uphold public morality. Postmasters general successfully argued against the restrictions, claiming, as Return J. Meigs, Jr. did in 1815, that mails traveling between the “extremes” of the “nation” might be delayed between two and five days and that it could hamper wartime communications, as well as other “blessings which flow” from daily access to a post office. Not until the 1840s did Sabbatarians achieve legislative and policy victories, after a transformation of American political culture shaped by middle-class reformism and the development of a more sophisticated affective nationalism than existed in 1810.167 In contrast to the United States, Britain did not support extensive, empiredirected road construction in the Canadian West. After acquiring Canada from France during the Seven Years War, Britain established a postal system that connected the lower thirteen colonies to the newly acquired French territory. The goal of the British Board of Trade that oversaw this work was to promote more regular communication between the metropole and its colonies, as well as between the mainland colonies themselves, and in doing so better organize and manage the colonial enterprise, particularly its economic components.168 Prior to the American Revolution, British officials largely focused on improving post routes along a north–south axis from Boston to Savannah. Mails to Lower Nikki M. Taylor, Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati’s Black Community, 1802–1868 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005); Walker, Free Frank; Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), passim. 167 Act of April 30, 1810, ch. 37, 2 Stat., 595; John, “Taking Sabbatarianism Seriously,” 527–8; Petition of Citizens of Philadelphia, n. d., Return J. Meigs Jr. to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, January 16, 1815, Am. St. Pap.: PO, 45, 46; William J. Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law & Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 152–6.. 168 P. D. G. Thomas, British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis: The First Phase of the American Revolution, 1763–1767 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 24–5. 166

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Canada traveled along an old Native American road from New York north to Albany, then along roads that ran parallel to Lake Champlain, and finally north to Montreal. The Revolution disrupted this pathway, prompting Canadian officials to hew a road connecting Quebec and Montreal to a new mail port of entry in Halifax, especially for winter mails. The long, difficult land journey from Halifax to the St. Lawrence proved too expensive for the empire in the long term. After the Treaty of Paris (1783), British officials worked with their former colonies to resume mail transport through New York and along the old pathway rather than retain the long, sparsely populated Canadian route. In 1792, the two sides reached an agreement in which the United States allowed sealed British mails to travel through New York for a fee.169 Mails first arrived in the hands of an American postal agent who then transferred the sealed mail to a British agent who then carried it north across the border. Once in Canada, mails passed slowly along postal routes first cut during French occupation.170 From Montreal, letters traveled to Niagara then along the north shore of Lake Erie to Detroit. Although these roads too suffered from disrepair, contemporary observers often described Canadian post roads as among the best maintained.171 This was little praise indeed. Unlike in the United States, the deputy postmaster there felt hamstrung by a British bureaucracy that required new routes to generate an immediate profit to recover expenses associated with its construction, general use, and repair. This expectation required sufficient settlement prior to British commitment to fund infrastructure development. By the 1810s, only a handful of post roads linked Upper Canada to settlements along the St. Lawrence River.172 As a litmus, postal routes and the commercial transportation infrastructure in Upper Canada reveal institutional ambivalence that resulted in obstacles to growth and settlement. The greatest concentration of administrative and military roads existed on the Niagara peninsula, where Upper Canadian residents witnessed perhaps the most success coordinating imperial settlement and economic transformation. British officials concentrated their efforts there because until 1800, the military remained a primary outlet for agricultural goods for the peninsula, which also served as an important hub for emigrants and merchants.173 The government constructed military and administrative roads along the peninsula to prompt settlement. As in the United States, imperially funded projects created conditions favorable for town and rural expansion. In some places they succeeded whereas in others settlement waned or failed altogether

William Smith, The History of the Post Office in British North America, 1639–1870 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1920), 1, 37, 42–3, 76–7, 80–1, 86, 88, 90–1. 170 William Smith, The History of the Post Office in British North America, 1639–1870, 38. 171 Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada, 505, 508. 172 William Smith, The History of the Post Office in British North America, 1639–1870, 97, 101, 103, 104. 173 Wilson, Enterprises of Robert Hamilton, 68, 72. 169

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as settlers weighed costs and benefits of land prices, location, infrastructure, and an assortment of other factors.174 To encourage commercial agriculture on the peninsula while also promoting exchange along the corridor to Detroit, Simcoe authorized the construction of a portage on the west side of the Niagara River where support facilities were also built. At Queenston, officials established a blockhouse, guardhouses, a wharf, and a two-story storehouse. Chippewa and Fort Erie likewise saw new wharves and a storehouse erected. As in the United States, infrastructure development merged the interests of commercial classes and government. In this case both contributed to the costs with local merchants staking £370 while the British government spent nearly £1,100. Construction of the portage coincided with a loosening of imperial restrictions on shipbuilding on the Great Lakes. Since the British conquest of Canada, government had limited shipbuilding in order to control trade, especially after the beginning of the American Revolution.175 By the late 1790s, private ship construction accelerated, but investment costs, risks associated with sailing on the Great Lakes, and continuing British restrictions limited ship ownership to the wealthiest merchant houses.176 Beyond the Niagara peninsula in Upper Canada, the colonial government invested far less, though that was not Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe’s objective. Because he “consider[ed] the Fur Trade . . . to be of no use whatsoever to the Colony,” he had intended to transform Upper Canada into a commercial province.177 But he rejected the relatively new Smithian maxim that “Trade should be left to itself,” concluding that it was “not true in theory nor in practice.” Rather he wanted to engender policies that would encourage “the agricultural part of the Country [to] materially assist the Commercial,” making the province a “vent” for British commodities.178 Unlike in the United States, cultivating a commercial class did not signal a move away from aristocratic privilege in favor of republicanism.179 As scholar S. J. R. Noel has amply demonstrated, Simcoe pursued a system of political clientelism that wedded imperial prerogative with mercantile interests by appointing established merchants like Robert Hamilton to develop and implement economic policy.180 Andrew F. Burghardt, “The Origin and Development of the Road Network of the Niagara Peninsula,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 59 (Sept. 1969), 437. 175 Wilson, The Enterprises of Robert Hamilton, 29–30, 69, 70; Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada, 448. 176 McCalla, “The ‘Loyalist’ Economy,” 300. 177 J. G. Simcoe to Henry Dundas, April 28, 1792, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 1: 141. 178 J. G. Simcoe to the Committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations, September 1, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 58, 65; J. G. Simcoe to Henry Dundas, April 28, 1792, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 1: 141. 179 Lillian F. Gates, Land Policies of Upper Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), 25. 180 S. J. R. Noel, Patrons, Clients, Brokers: Ontario Society and Politics, 1791–1896 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1990), 40–60; Frederick H. Armstrong, “The Oligarchy of the Western 174

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With a long view to enhance conditions for settlement and commercial agriculture, Simcoe utilized soldiers to construct roads that eased provincial military supply systems, lobbying for a more deliberate and extensive use of the Queen’s Rangers. In this way, soldiers could work toward military and economic ends, erecting bridges and mills, and hewing roads.181 Although towns and cities could meet most demands for labor, between them, substantial territories remained unsettled by non-Indians. In these areas where labor remained in short supply, military labor served as an effective tool for internal improvements.182 In contrast to liberal land settlement policies in the United States, the Upper Canadian government during the 1790s controlled disbursements of free land grants, which required payment of a fee. By orchestrating settlement, officials expected that they could cultivate economic growth.183 To obtain land, settlers were required by law to clear and fence at least five acres, build a “Sufficient dwelling House,” and maintain one-half the width of the road in front of their property.184 Pathmasters, whom taxpaying settlers appointed at annual township meetings, oversaw local road development. They ensured that imperial regulations were met, such as enforcement of statute labor and minimum road widths of between thirty and ninety feet.185 This was how roads, particularly those with elevated military value, received somewhat regular maintenance with minimum imperial expenditure. Within a couple months, the Executive Council placed the same terms on land distributed on the Kingston Road through the townships of Leeds, Landsdown, Pittsburgh, and Kingston.186 Unfortunately for policymakers, evidence suggests that settlers in Upper Canada preferred to homestead not along designated roads, but on the best lands available, as well as in or near towns that already had several roads emanating from them.187 Even when settlers clustered along prescribed routes, at least one study, which examines settlement along Yonge Street, reveals that few of those families met the minimum legal requirement to improve the way by their lot.188 District of Upper Canada, 1788–1841,” in J. K. Johnson and Bruce G. Wilson, Historical Essays on Upper Canada: New Perspectives (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989), 523, 526. 181 Gates, Land Policies of Upper Canada, 28. 182 H. Clare Pentland argues that that use of the Queen’s Rangers evidences labor scarcity, but that scarcity should be viewed as uneven across the region. H. Clare Pentland, Labour and Capital in Canada, 1650–1860 (Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., 1981; rpt. 1960), 50. 183 See for instance, Minutes of the Executive Council, December 22, 1798 and March 9, 1799, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 40–1, 137. 184 Minutes of the Executive Council, December 6, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 25. 185 Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada, 536. 186 Minutes of the Executive Council, February 4, 1799, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 98–9. 187 McIlwraith, “The Adequacy of Rural Roads in the Era before Railways,” 200; Burghardt, “­Origin and Development of the Road Network of the Niagara Peninsula,” 438. 188 See McIlwraith, “The Adequacy of Rural Roads in the Era before Railways,” 199, 206.

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Yet because of the value Upper Canadian provincial officials attached to these routes, they employed several measures to clear primary thoroughfares. Other than Yonge Street, the Executive Council largely focused on the condition of an extensive road that stretched from the St. Lawrence River near Cornwall in the east to Kingston, then to York, across the Grand River to Norwich and then downstream along the River Thames to Amherstburg.189 To overcome the problems they experienced elsewhere, the Council earmarked land to be sold to cover the cost of building and maintaining these roads.190 They planned to task idle soldiers, in addition to private contractors, to clear fallen timber and smooth roads.191 The project met with marginal success with workers having cleared a road thirty-three feet wide at some points to allow for a substantial volume of traffic.192 Comparatively, the Upper Canadian provincial government devoted less of their fiscal resources to internal improvements than the United States. Although Simcoe intended to use the Queen’s Rangers to develop a more sophisticated infrastructure, Dorchester and others in Whitehall stymied his efforts, going so far as to remove most of the Queen’s Rangers from the province by the middle of the 1790s and to forbid their use on nonmilitary projects. Not to be deterred, Simcoe directed soldiers to begin construction in the “new” military and administrative towns of York, London, and Chatham while deploying less of their labor in the older fort areas of Detroit, Niagara, and Kingston.193 In 1802, the provincial government disbanded the Queen’s Rangers, and not until 1804 did the budget allow for road improvements when it allocated a mere £1,000. No financial aid incentives existed to support private roads and Upper Canadian officials found that they could muster political support only when roads could be framed as a military necessity or advantage.194 Residents nevertheless looked to their government to construct roads that would facilitate commerce.195 During the next decade, a growing body of provincial administrators began to view road improvements as worthwhile expenditures. The pace of change was glacial, even after military and government officials witnessed the consequences of poor roads during the War of 1812. In the 1816 budget,

Report of the Committee Re Roads to Peter Russell, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 46. 190 Minutes of the Executive Council, April 13, 1799, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 173. 191 Minutes of the Executive Council, January 19, 1799, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 58; Minutes of the Executive Council, March 26, 1799, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 157–8. 192 Minutes of the Executive Council, April 9, 1799, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 165–6. 193 Gates, Land Policies of Upper Canada, 32–4. 194 Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada, 533–4. 195 Memorial of the North West Co. Respecting Indian Traders to His Excellency Francis Gore, November 5, 1810, MPHC, 25: 274–5. 189

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government reserved £21,000 for road improvement and construction but roads continued to be “in such a deplorable state of neglect,” as one observer remarked, “the farmers cannot bring their produce to Market . . . excepting by Water.”196 Despite augmented budgets for road construction during the 1820s and 1830s, land travel and transport throughout Canada, even in the more sophisticated eastern provinces, remained a challenging, time-consuming affair into the 1840s.197 Poor roads notwithstanding, the Upper Canadian economy expanded ­rapidly during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The imperial government, which spent between £54,000 and £77,000 annually for military and administrative costs, remained a significant consumer in the region. But with each passing year, the growing settler population consumed a larger comparative portion of agricultural surpluses.198 By the turn of the century, wheat emerged as a dominant export item, largely to Britain, and a nascent lumber products industry made inroads in eastern parts of the province.199 Queenston merchant Robert Hamilton characterized wheat exports as offering Upper Canadians “what they most essentially want, a Steady Market for the overplus of their agricultural produce, and the means for paying for many Articles of conveniency, which they can neither raise, nor will dispense with.”200 Merchants absorbed costs for transporting wheat across to England, where they also faced duties from 7½ to 9½ d. per quarter (one quarter equals eight bushels), as Parliament sought to protect domestic production. Although Parliament slowly abandoned mercantilist economic approaches to it colonies, it remained reluctant to transform Upper Canada into an imperial granary but did provide Canadian wheat a colonial preferential rate of 10s. per quarter over foreignproduced crops.201 Despite developing a modest export market, Upper Canada remained a regional economy intimately bound to American settlements along the opposite shore. To a greater extent than Upper Canadians, Ohio Valleyans looked to markets in the Atlantic world. If the western economy had only just sprouted by 1790, it blossomed by 1800. That year, 220,955 people, including slaves, inhabited Guillet, Early Life in Upper Canada, 534; Peter Russell to the Duke of Portland, November 25, 1798, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 327. 197 Robert Mackinnon, “Roads, Cart Tracks, and Bridle Paths: Land Transportation and the Domestic Economy of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Eastern British North America,” The Canadian Historical Review, vol. 84 (June 2003), 184–5. 198 Douglas McCalla, “The ‘Loyalist’ Economy of Upper Canada,” Social History, vol. 16 (Nov. 1983), 291; Pentland, Labour and Capital in Canada, 144; Pentland, “The Role of Capital in Canadian Economic Development,” 460. 199 McCalla, “The ‘Loyalist’ Economy of Upper Canada,” 294; Douglas McCalla, “Forest Products and Upper Canadian Development, 1815–46,” Canadian Historical Review, vol. 68 (June 1987), 161. 200 Robert Hamilton to Major James Green, July 11, 1803, quoted in Pentland, Labour and Capital in Canada, 143. 201 Gates, Land Policies of Upper Canada, 115. 196

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Kentucky.202 One year later, a census of the Ohio Territory counted 45,365, including more than 3,000 people living in Wayne County, which included Detroit and its surrounding settlements.203 By 1810, Kentucky and Ohio had populations of 406,511 and 230,760, respectively.204 In southern parts of Ohio, corn, wheat, and rye fields stretched along river valleys and along roads crisscrossing the territory. In the fertile Miami and Scioto river valleys, corn farmers reaped as much as sixty bushels per acre. From 1804 through the War of 1812, cattle raised in the Scioto Valley not only supported the local economy, they were sold in markets as far away as Baltimore.205 A large portion of interregional trade went to New Orleans. In 1795, Spain retreated from its hostile stance toward the United States and signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo (Pinckney’s Treaty), opening the Mississippi River to American river traffic duty free. Even more important, American traders could use New Orleans as a staging depot for transnational and trans-Atlantic trade.206 Ohio Valleyans belligerently asserted their right to free access to the Mississippi River, especially when they suspected the Spanish might not allow the transfer of New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase.207 Arthur St. Clair disparaged their efforts to look beyond the regional economy, assessing that the “people” were “very little prepared to avail themselves” of free navigation of the Mississippi, though they “so ardently pant for it.”208 But by 1802, a year before the United States acquired the Louisiana Territory, nearly $2.6 million in trade traveled annually to New Orleans from Kentucky, western Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Kentuckian Samuel Hopkins confidently observed in the spring of 1800 that the “immense Quantity of produce floated down the Ohio this season, exceeds all Idea of an infant country.” He continued, trumpeting that “We shall soon be able to assert our title to commercial Manhood.”209 In 1807, the region’s river trade had buffed out to $5.3 million, and with each passing year, Ohio gained an ever-increasing proportion of the region’s exports. Of all the Ohio Valley goods shipped to New Orleans during the first decade of the nineteenth century, nearly seventy percent traveled to ports outside of the United States, including many in the West Indies, South America, and the Iberian Peninsula.210 The Ohio Valley economy had become quite muscular. Historical Census Browser, Geostat Center: Collections, University of Virginia Library. William Goforth to the President, January 5, 1802, TPUS, 3: 199. 204 Historical Census Browser, Geostat Center: Collections, University of Virginia Library. 205 John G. Clark, The Grain Trade in the Old Northwest (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966), 13–14. 206 David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 289. 207 John Breckinridge to George Thompson, November 3, 1803, George Thompson Papers, WLC; Weber, Spanish Frontier in North America, 291. 208 Governor St. Clair to the Secretary of State, n. d., 1794, St. Clair Papers, 2: 327. 209 Samuel Hopkins to Walter Alves, May 15, 1800, Samuel Hopkins Papers, KHS. 210 Clark, Grain Trade in the Old Northwest, 34–5. 202 203

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The rise of a western market economy must be credited in large part to the intervention of the federal government. The arrival of the American military and American settlers in the northern Ohio country fostered an expansion of the Lakes trade. Post roads and other federally funded roads opened the West to settlement, agriculture, and commerce. Even in Upper Canada, military roads encouraged economic growth. Both British Canada and the United States forged partnerships between government and local constituencies for economic development but each did so within different political-economic contexts. As states came into the Union, Congress intended to pass a portion of the responsibility for internal improvements to those individual states. In 1803, when Ohio entered the Union, Congress declared that three percent of proceeds from land sales would revert back to the state for the purpose of constructing roads.211 Not until 1810, however, did the Ohio legislature use these funds for internal improvements.212 In his 1808 Report on Roads and Canals, Albert Gallatin suggested to Congress that the federal government actively participate in extensive road and canal building. In many ways, his report attempted to accomplish for internal improvements what Alexander Hamilton’s report on public credit had done for fiscal policy. The western economy had expanded rapidly and Gallatin’s plan sought to tie together the commercial regions of the United States. He argued that enhancing the ability to transport goods across regions would augment trade nationally and raise property values along trade routes. While presented as a national plan, Gallatin’s Report might be more accurately characterized as a collection of regional or district integration plans. In the West, he attempted to strengthen established commercial avenues whereby military supplies could be obtained more easily. Certainly this helps explain his proposed road from Detroit to the Connecticut Reserve rather than to Cincinnati, as well as the Nashville Road to Natchez rather than Louisville or Cincinnati. In his eyes, national integration could occur as a consequence of regional or interstate integration. As John Larson shows, Gallatin’s plan failed to be implemented less because of resistance to federal expenditures for internal improvements and more because people interpreted it “as an invitation to the public trough.”213 Scholars have failed to see the effect of the federal government on the western economy because they have looked for internal improvements designed ostensibly enhance trade, such as turnpikes, locks, and canals, like those proposed by Gallatin.214 Few of these efforts existed before 1815. Instead, the federal government shaped the western economy through expenditures where economic effects occurred as ancillary benefits to the primary agendas.

Section 2, Act of March 3, 1803, ch. 21, 2 Stat., 226. Malone, Opening the West, 25. 213 Larson, “‘Bind the Republic Together,’” 374. 214 See for instance, Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 18, 157. 211 212

5 The National State in Indian Country

As federal institutions contributed to an economic transformation of settler territory, they also moved to shape the economy in Indian country. The most important institutional contribution made by the federal government was the factory system, a series of public trading posts scattered across the Northwest. Although much ink has been spilt lauding the virtues of laissez-fair capitalism at the expense of these institutions, few scholars situate the factory system and fur trade within a set of agencies and programs designed to establish and cement federal authority in Indian country.1 In addition to factories, an Indian agency, the military, and territorial governments extended federal institutions 1

The literature on the fur trade is too voluminous to list here. What follows is a sample that examines the region under study. For literature celebrating the success of private traders relative to the failure of public trading houses, see Frederick Jackson Turner, The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin: A Study of the Trading Post as an Institution (New York: Burt Franklin, 1970; rpt. 1891); Ida Amanda Johnson, The Michigan Fur Trade (Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1919); Wayne Edson Stevens, The Northwest Fur Trade, 1763–1800 in University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, vol. 14 (Sept. 1926) (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1928); Harold A. Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930); Paul Chrisler Phillips, The Fur Trade, 2 vols. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961). More recent literature largely abandons institutional questions in favor of analysis of the rich cultural milieu and social relationships that defined the fur trade. See for instance, Jennifer S. H. Brown, W. J. Eccles, and Donald P. Heldman, eds., The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994); Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), especially chapter 11; Jo-Anne Fiske, Susan Sleeper-Smith, and William Wicken, eds., New Faces of the Fur Trade: Selected Papers of the Seventh North American Fur Trade Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1995 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998); Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001).

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beyond areas settled by whites. Federal administrators and agents used the law, diplomacy, partnerships, and threat of violence in their attempts to convince, cajole, and inveigle Indians and whites that the national state was the ­preeminent authority and would determine the nature and flow of commerce in Indian territory on its side of the international border. Federal agents naturally met more resistance there than in settler territories. By 1807, the cumulative project of expanding federal authority in Indian country amplified economic stresses there and made political solutions to Indian–American relations more difficult. After the Treaty of Greenville, tribal envoys returned to their homes and began the process of sorting out postwar life in Indian country. Most Native American communities tried to improve their diplomatic relationships with the United States without undermining their ties to British agents and traders. Yet they also sought to remain economically autonomous and geographically distant from both settler territories in British Canada and the United States as each worked to develop commercial economies distinct from the fur trade. Refugee villages at Swan Creek began to disband as the threat of American incursions subsided, prompting communities to reclaim lands abandoned during the war. By the end of 1795, a party of Delaware – led by Tetepachsit – and Shawnee established a temporary settlement in the vicinity of Fort Defiance.2 The following year, a group of Shawnee led by Red Pole erected a village two miles from the same fort.3 To the south, Delaware chief Captain Crow, who signed the Greenville treaty and was seen by American officers as “distinguished for his honesty and sobriety,” watched women of his community tend crops as the clamor of soldiers at Fort Jefferson rang in the distance.4 For communities willing to forge political and economic relationships with the United States, leaders attempted to cultivate affiliations rooted in mutual respect, equality of power, and reciprocal gift-giving practices. To that end, Tetepachsit offered what material support he could to Americans who needed it. As the commandant of Fort Defiance glowed, “Too much cannot be said of old Tetteboskey [sic] . . . any thing he may have is ever at the Service of the Soldiers that may pass by His House.”5 If Tetepachsit’s object was to nurture a middle ground, that matrix of economic, political, and social relationships that would bind Indian communities and the U.S. government in mutual accord, the obstacles to that end were many. As Richard White contends, such Major William Winston to General James Wilkinson, January 14, 1796, William Winston Papers, CHS. 3 Major William Winston to Colonel John Francis Hamtramck, May 3, 1796, William Winston Papers, CHS. 4 July 1, 1796, in James Elliot, The Poetical and Miscellaneous Works of James Elliot, Citizen of Guilford, Vermont, and Late a Noncommissioned Officer in the Legion of the United States (Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, 1976; rpt. 1798), 158. 5 Major William Winston to Major General Anthony Wayne, February 2, 1796, William Winston Papers, CHS. 2

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relationships functioned most effectively when military superiority remained uncertain and all parties met at the table as equals.6 Wayne’s campaign had demonstrated the capacity of the United States to defeat an Indian confederacy and the predetermined conditions of the Treaty of Greenville undermined any sense of equitable partnership. Expectedly, most Indian communities displayed ambivalence about allying strictly with either the United States or Britain. Until the takeover of British forts by the U.S. military, Delaware and Shawnee settlements near Fort Defiance maintained their trading contacts at Fort Miami.7 Afterward, many Indian communities that lived south of the Great Lakes chose to travel to British trading centers rather than to American competitors. Such elective differences reveal underlying divisions within Indian country as communities wrestled with the region’s altered geopolitics. They also suggest that while many Indian leaders deployed rituals associated with the middle ground in their meetings with American agents, the intended meaning had narrowed to political context without concomitant economic and social outcomes. Even if some Indian communities held high expectations for a restitution of the middle ground, the federal government had little intention of fulfilling them. By the middle of the 1790s, federal policy makers embraced Enlightenment ideas of progress, especially racial progress.8 Despite crystallizing ideological differences between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans in the capital, a remarkable uniformity existed among national politicians when it came to Indian relations.9 Rather than encourage Indians to pursue the “precarious resources of hunting and fishing,” federal administrators instructed agents to deploy strategies that would encourage Indians to adopt “the implements and the practice of husbandry.”10 Unlike their French and British predecessors who made few sweeping efforts to challenge Native American productive and subsistence patterns, U.S. national leaders wanted to break paternalistic gift-giving practices, which they perceived as an unnecessary burden on the public weal. While still couched in a language of benevolence, American energies focused more on promoting civilization projects and less on humanitarian impulses.11 In the early West, this approach to Indian policy meant that Wayne and his commanders offered meager provisional support to Indians who visited White, Middle Ground, 52. Major William Winston to General James Wilkinson, January 14, 1796, William Winston Papers, CHS. 8 Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 38–49; Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing Americans: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982), 4–5. 9 Bernard W. Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), 125–6. 10 Message of President Jefferson to the House of Representatives, December 8, 1801, Am. St. Pap. For. Rel., 1: 58; Reginald Horsman, “American Indian Policy in the Old Northwest, 1783– 1812,” WMQ, vol. 18 (Jan. 1961), 35–53. 11 Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction, 121–3. 6 7

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or sought material aid at federal facilities. When Major William Winston ­prepared to assume command of Fort Defiance in 1795, Wayne instructed him that “Humanity & Policy require that you should comply in a moderate degree with the demands of Indians for the essential articles of provision  – that is to say – flour, beef, salt, and occasionally a small allowance of liquor.” However, commandants who supplied goods to Native Americans needed to do so with “economy.”12 Thus, as supplies to forward forts ran thin, so too did the American government’s ability and willingness to support beleaguered villagers and to fulfill even marginal expectations of any Indians who camped near American forts. No sooner did Major Winston arrive at Defiance than he halted the distribution of goods to soliciting villagers and put his entire garrison on half rations because of dwindling supplies.13 According to Winston, sympathy led him to issue “more than [he] should” to the villagers because he feared they would otherwise die in the harsh winter weather.14 For their part, Native Americans challenged American parsimony by prompting trade and gift giving when they passed through American forts. Some Indians went “frequently” to nearby posts to receive whatever aid they might, especially in the uneasy transitions years between Fallen Timbers and British surrender of posts south of the Lakes in 1796.15 Indian hunters eager to dispose of their pelts arrived at American posts looking for traders.16 At other times, elders visited with post commanders to renew diplomatic relations or air grievances.17 In almost all of these cases, such parties “expected” some gift from “their father.” As Colonel John Hamtramck reasoned, “they have been accustomed to it, by both French and British Governments, and it would be impolitic of us not to do the same.”18 By frequenting American posts, Native Americans made it nearly impossible for the federal government to abandon policies of gift giving completely. Despite reduced expectations for balanced reciprocity  – and perhaps because of them  – most Native American communities cultivated peaceable relations with American traders, military, and government officials, as well as General Anthony Wayne to Major William Winston, December 13, 1795, William Winston ­Papers, CHS. 13 Major William Winston to Colonel James Francis Hamtramck, January 12, 1796, William ­Winston Papers, CHS. 14 Major William Winston to Colonel John Francis Hamtramck, February 2, 1796, William ­Winston Papers, CHS. 15 For some insight into the frequency of fort visits and requisitions they received see box 49, Torrence Papers, CHS; and folder 15, box 2, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 16 Anfant Noiez [Hyacinth Lasselle] to Antoine Lasselle, March 4, 1796, folder 1, box 2, Lasselle Collection, ISL. 17 John Wilkinson to William Henry Harrison, June 30, 1798, folder 6, box 1, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, 1791–1864, IHS; Rufus Putnam to Oliver Wolcott, September 18, 1799, box 1, Native American Collection, WLC. 18 John Hamtramck to James Wilkinson, January 24, 1796, folder 13, box 2, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 12

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ordinary citizens, even if resentment about the outcomes of the war and treaty remained high. By the end of 1797, the U.S. military abandoned Fort Defiance, and nearby Shawnee and Delaware communities who reclaimed lands near the Glaize maintained a lively village life. In 1799, Kentucky drovers moving cattle to Detroit along the military road cut by Wayne reached the decaying remains of Fort Defiance. As the Kentuckians struggled to move their cattle across the Maumee River, men from nearby villages arrived to help.19 The voluntary aid offered by these men illustrated a dedication to build on an established peace even without a military presence. But as one scholar notes, such traffic meant that Indians had to manage not only territorial boundaries, but also roads cutting through their lands, which carried white travelers. These roads, military and otherwise, transformed the meaning and use of that space in the minds of Indians, passing whites, and the federal government.20 Tetepachsit and others who opened their homes to passing soldiers did so to define access to Indian country as much as diplomatic attachments. Native American communities seeking refuge near British forts and posts following Fallen Timbers received aid and presents, but witnessed greater frugality on the part of imperial agents. As Robert Allen argues, by the late 1790s, British officials attempted to cut what they perceived to be bloated expenses of the Indian Department.21 Since its creation in 1755, the Indian Department had been closely associated with the military, with a common budget and often confused lines of authority.22 Once peace became certain along the bordered land between the United States and Canada, the Indian Department was targeted for budget cuts. For some Canadian and British administrators, Indian agent Matthew Elliot became an example of indulgent bureaucratic excess. Elliot had taken advantage of lackluster oversight to amass a considerable estate and fortune in only a few years.23 In 1797, some of his political rivals accused him of exploiting his access to imperial coffers by providing unwarranted presents and provisions to Indians in order to facilitate his own commercial interests.24 Unable to dispel the negative light cast upon him, the prickly Elliot September 10, 1799, “A Journal of a Journey to Detroit Set out on the 21st day of Augt 1799 by myself and others,” KHS. 20 Angela Pulley Hudson, Creek Paths and Federal Roads: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves and the Making of the American South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 65, chapter 3. 21 Robert S. Allen, His Majesty’s Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defense of Canada, 1774–1815 (Dundurn Press, 1992), 91. 22 Colin G. Calloway, Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783–1815 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 52. 23 Larry L. Nelson, A Man of Distinction among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754–1799 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1999), 180–1. 24 Robert Prescott to Peter Russell, December 15, 1797, in E. A. Cruikshank and A. F. Hunder, eds., The Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell with Allied Documents Relating to His Administration of the Government of Upper Canada during the Official Term of Lieut.-Governor J. G. Simcoe While on Leave of Absence, vol. 2 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1932–5), 43. 19

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was released from his duties.25 In a further effort to halt such abuses, Captain Hector Maclean, commandant of Fort Malden, was instructed to monitor the operations of the local Indian Department and limit gifts distributed by its agents whenever he could. Maclean brought such rigor to this task that Thomas McKee later complained the officer had single-handedly altered British policy toward the region’s tribes.26 Although Maclean’s commanders ordered him to ease his strict policies regarding presents and provisions to Native Americans in 1799, the incident took well over a year to resolve.27 In addition to declining material support, British agents also dispossessed Indians of territory, most notably the Mississauga. By 1797, conflict over imperial expansionism became so heated they sparked rumors of a potential Indian war that made their way through Upper Canadian settler communities.28 Pressure for land cessions reflected the cementing of a commercial agenda for Upper Canada and the deep ambivalence of London policymakers toward their remaining North American possessions. Ministers of Parliament allocated even less of their time to such matters once Britain became the only remaining belligerent opposing the French revolutionary government in 1798.29 As Britain, the United States, and Indians revised their mutual political relationships, Indian communities did the same among themselves in Indian country. During the 1780s and 1790s, white American assaults on Indian communities prompted Native American refugees from the Ohio Valley to form composite settlements for mutual defense and productive efficiency. Along a north-westerly trajectory, Delaware and Shawnee villages gradually had moved from eastern and southern Ohio to places like the Glaize and Miami Villages, where they formed the core of the pan-Indian confederacy. But with peace reestablished, a diaspora ensued with families moving south, east, and west, as they recast settlement patterns with the Greenville cession in mind. Although few documents exist revealing the intentions of these individuals, patterns suggest that greater village and tribal autonomy were important considerations shaping the new political geography within Indian country. Shawnee and Delaware villages generally abandoned large, composite communities in favor of smaller and ethnically homogenous ones. There, according to one scholar, agriculture Robert Prescott to the Duke of Portland, December 27, 1797, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 48. For a rich exploration of Elliot’s conflict with the military, see chapter 6 of Reginald Horsman, Matthew Elliot, British Indian Agent (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964). 26 Robert Prescott to the Duke of Portland, December 27, 1797, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 48; Thomas McKee to William Claus, June 5, 1799, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 3: 220–1. 27 James Green to Hector Maclean, July 8, 1799, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell. 3: 259–60. 28 Allen, His Majesty’s Indian Allies, 95. 29 Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 87–8. 25

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became even more important after 1795 to compensate for a decline in trade following the war.30 Even with the decline, the fur trade remained an important component of the Indian country economy. During the war, men tended emphasize their roles as warriors more than hunters, reducing the quantity of pelts taken each year. In the Maumee and upper Wabash river valleys, where hunting supported refugee families during the first half of the 1790s, animal populations came under heavy stress. Nearer to evacuated villages, in abandoned hunting territories, and in highly contested areas between Indian and settler lands fur-bearing animals experienced population increases as winter hunts imparted less of a toll. When Indian men began hunting and sorting out new territorial boundaries after 1794, they often found game populations to be “prodigious.”31 Most men viewed improved game populations as a boon in the postwar period, especially as they carved new spaces for their communities. During the autumn of 1795, parties of Delaware hunters met fierce resistance south of the Maumee and Auglaize river valleys, probably from Shawnee and Wyandot men also attempting to claim hunting areas.32 After a fall hunt in 1796, Delaware hunters remarked at the large number of deer and bear they killed and good hunting followed for several years.33 That same season, large numbers of animals, perhaps reacting to renewed hunting pressures, moved north away from Lake Erie and damaged Upper Canadian agricultural fields.34 Although overlapping land use patterns continued, Indian designs to ­engender spheres of influence resembled a modified version of one established following the Seven Years War. A significant difference was that a number of tribes, such as the Delaware, who had been refugees prior to the American Revolution, now considered the region their home and believed they possessed concomitant rights to land and its use.35 A reorganization of Indian country came about by both diplomacy and violence as communities sorted out access and use of land and resources. Increased rivalries for land and trade during the peace probably helped emphasize cultural divides between various tribes. By 1810, Stewart Rafert, The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People, 1654–1994 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1996), 63. 31 J. G. Simcoe to the Committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations, September 1, 1794, in E. A. Cruikshank, ed., The Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, with Allied Documents Relating to His Administration of the Government of Upper Canada, vol. 3 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1923–6), 55. 32 The resistance might have also come from Miami, Wea, or Piankshaw hunters, but this scenario seems less likely. September 24 and 25, 1795, in David Zeisberger, Diary of David Zeisberger: A Moravian Missionary among the Indians of Ohio, vol. 2, trans. and ed. Eugene F. Bliss (St. Clair Shores, MI: Scholarly Press, 1972), 421. 33 December 1, 1796, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 465. 34 October 5, 1796, Diary of David Zeisberger, 2: 459. 35 William Henry Harrison to William Eustice, November 3, 1809, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, IHS; Helen Hornbeck Tanner, ed., Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 60, 62–3, 101. 30

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Shawnee and Wyandot villages occupied territory at the mutual ­headwaters of the Auglaize, Great Miami, and Scioto Rivers. At the end of the Seven Years War, this land had been at a border between Shawnee and Wyandot lands. The divisive Treaty of Greenville had brought elements of these two tribes closer together and they continued to share agricultural and hunting territories in central and western Ohio, though some Wyandot villages exclusively occupied the lower Sandusky river valley. Other Shawnee villages moved west, closer to the mouth of the Ohio River, while still others joined Shawnee villages that migrated west of the Mississippi prior to Fallen Timbers. Miami leadership, headed by Little Turtle, continued to claim much of present-day Indiana as their own, in confederation with the Wea and Piankeshaw. Miami villages dotted the upper Wabash River and its tributaries, though well downstream from Fort Wayne. Wea villages remained in the middle Wabash River region with Piankeshaw south of them along the same river. As factions of the formerly confederated tribes relinquished lands in the southern third of Indiana during the first decade of the nineteenth century, Piankeshaw families began to establish settlements west of the Wabash River. Delaware men and women, who had lost almost all the territory they claimed in the Muskingum Valley in eastern Ohio, now needed to rely on others for land. Delaware communities eventually returned to eastern Ohio to live on reservations set aside for them, but doing so meant residing among a growing American population. For this reason, many Delaware families accepted an offer from Miami leaders allowing them use of lands along the White River in Indiana.36 When faced with a decision of where to dwell, Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, and other villagers strove to maintain their autonomy and avoid conflict as much as possible. Most members of the former confederacy chose to live away from American settlements and the roads that linked those communities. In the short term, these decisions promoted peaceful reestablishment of communities, as well as a stabilization of the region’s political economy. In the long term, they contributed to setting the Indian country economy apart from a growing commercial agricultural economy in the Ohio Valley and Upper Canada. Notwithstanding the distance Native American communities desired between themselves and white American settlements, many hoped to bridge the gap by engaging traders from the United States. As early as the end of the treaty council at Fort Greenville, Little Turtle asked Anthony Wayne to authorize traders to visit Ouiatenon. Wayne acknowledged that Miami, Wea, and other communities could independently deal with traders, as long as an agent of the U.S. government issued them a license. Eager to accelerate the process, Little Turtle and some Wea chiefs returned with a list of people they wanted licensed as soon as possible.37 Later, Kaskaskian villages in Illinois invited the United Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, 98–9, 100–3. Treaty of Greenville, July 30, 1795, and Supplement to the Treaty of Greenville, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 577, 578, 583.

36 37

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States to “create a small post in that Quarter.” Hoping to take advantage of regional imperial rivalries for trade and territory in the Mississippi Valley, the message from the Kaskaskians suggested that Spanish agents were attempting to stir animosity in their villages against the United States.38 To American territorial officials in the Ohio Valley, aggressive moves by British traders posed a more immediate concern, especially after Pinckney’s Treaty. To preserve their trade from enterprising American merchants, British traders aggressively toured the Illinois and Indiana country, sometimes as close as ten to twenty miles outside of larger American towns, underselling their American competitors or giving away their goods as gifts. Ohio territorial governor Arthur St. Clair characterized this strategy as a ploy “to destroy the Credit of our traders, and alienate the Affections of the Savages.”39 As demonstrated by numerous scholars, imperial contests gave leverage to Native Americans willing to play competing powers against each other. If the United States wanted to stretch its colonial influence into the West, villages would welcome its representatives and its gifts of alliance. Rather than try to compete with established British and French merchants, Congress and the Adams and Jefferson administrations instead decided to dictate the terms of trade between whites and Indians. By controlling trade, they hoped to achieve greater economic and political influence in Indian country than had the European powers. Political developments in the Atlantic world only elevated the importance of achieving this goal. Especially among anglophiles, paranoia of potential French conspiracies washed across the western country, intensifying after the XYZ Affair soured Franco-American relations. Trans-Appalachian westerners feared that if the French should commence any “projects in our western frontier,” the Indians would “attach themselves to their old Allies” and that the national state had “neither force, presents, agents, government, nor any thing else to prevent it.”40 Therefore, control of the Indian trade, not just influence among Indians, would be critical if the United States were to maintain command of the region. Regulating the Indian trade had been a congressional goal since 1783.41 Prior to Fallen Timbers, British officials and traders successfully used their political alliances with local villages to strengthen their economic ties, thereby limiting American participation in the region’s fur trade. From an American perspective, the British government had used its economic power to manipulate Native Americans to incite war. In 1792, Wayne surmised that British “may not directly  – [but] I am convinced that they do indirectly stimulate Anthony Wayne to James McHenry, July 8, 1796, in Richard C. Knopf, ed., Anthony Wayne: A Name in Arms (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1960), 496–7. 39 Governor Arthur St. Clair to the Secretary of State, May 4, 1795, TPUS, 2: 515–16. 40 James Ross to James McHenry, April 3, 1797, folder 20, box 2, Northwest Territory Collection, IHS. 41 Phillips, The Fur Trade, 2: 68. 38

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the savages to continue the War.”42 American leaders commonly believed that once the United States monopolized trade with Native Americans, they could influence their behavior. The two issues  – trade and control  – could not be divorced. “[C]ould the valuable skin and fur trade . . . be diverted to the ports of the United States, instead of Canada,” William Henry Harrison mused, “it would not only give a handsome emolument to our merchants . . . but it would also confirm the dependence of the Indians upon us.”43 Trade begot political power, which reflectively bolstered trade. As Timothy Pickering prepared instructions outlining American Indian policy in 1795, approaches to governing Indian affairs had not been revised much. What had changed was the ability of the federal government to use its fiscal powers to extend national state authority into Indian country to “gain their permanent confidence and a useful influence over them.”44 The degree to which federal authorities could practically exert power beyond America’s scattered military installations remained to be seen. Private traders, particularly British and French traders, presented unique challenges to regulated trade. Laurentian fur trade companies, smaller Canadian merchants, and itinerant traders who held allegiances with the French and British empires preserved their economic connections in Indian country and used newly constructed British forts and trading houses in proximity to Detroit, Michilimackinac, and Niagara as their bases of operation. The British fort system and merchant trading alliances with Native Americans proved resilient to American newcomers even after the empire handed over its forts south of the Great Lakes. British diplomats aggressively wrangled with Congress to ensure that provisions in Jay’s Treaty allowing free trade across the new international border not be usurped by the eighth clause of the Treaty of Greenville, which authorized only federally licensed individuals to operate as traders.45 From England, Lord Grenville called into question the honor of American politicians, arguing that the contradiction between free trade and licensed trade cast doubts on the “sincerity and good faith” of the United States.46 Not until Congress passed an explanatory article in May 1796 Anthony Wayne to Henry Knox, August 24, 1792, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 72 (original emphasis). 43 William Henry Harrison to the Secretary of War, February 19, 1802, in Logan Esarey, ed., Governors Messages and Letters: Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison, vol. 1 (­Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Commission, 1922), 38–9. 44 Timothy Pickering to Anthony Wayne, April 8, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 400. 45 Article 3, “Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation,” in Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America, v. 2, 1776–1818, ed. Hunter Miller (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1931), 246–8. 46 Lord Grenville to Phineas Bond, January 18, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 172–3. See also, Lord Dorchester to R. G. England and Alexander ­McKee, April 23, 1796, and J. G. Simcoe to Alexander McKee, May 3, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 249, 258. 42

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that gave supremacy to the third article of Jay’s Treaty did British diplomatic ­pressure subside.47 Jay’s Treaty might have offered British merchants access to Indian country, but the federal government was unwilling to relinquish its right to regulate and limit that trade. Unfettered competition summoned specters of chaos as diplomacy with Indian nations crumbled under the weight of commercial interests divested of national state prerogative. Federally funded trading houses that competed with private traders, paired with regulation and licensing, offered the American government opportunities to make private traders beholden to the national state and to check the potentially destructive effects of abusive traders by controlling access to Indian country. This approach did not hold in Canada where the legislative council ended requirements that traders obtain a license to trade with Indians in 1791.48 Congress modified legislation governing Indian trade to reflect shifting national-state interests in Indian country. In 1790, as Congress took a more assertive role in the western war, it required licenses for all those who intended to trade with Native Americans to minimize unnecessary contact and conflict.49 But in 1793, as pressure to facilitate settlement in Kentucky and the Ohio Valley increased and Anthony Wayne’s forces readied for an invasion of Indian country, Congress opened limited trade by allowing emigrants to barter for only incidental items, not items that might be used in war, including horses.50 Eager to “preserve Peace” in 1796, Congress doubled penalties for trespassers in Indian Territory north of the Ohio River, but not for those in the southwest. When territorial governments attempted to reap fiscal rewards from an expanding fur trade, federal officials asserted the national-state monopoly on regulating Indian trade.51 After Ohio achieved statehood in 1803, Ohio Valley traders wanted to capitalize on ambiguities in the overlapping boundaries of the state and Indian country. While some residents argued that federal law did not apply within the boundaries of the new state, Jefferson’s administration stridently asserted federal sovereignty within “Indian boundary lines,” and “state lines” were not “to be particularly regarded.”52 Canadian traders progressively found it difficult to avoid federal interference. Despite several administrative efforts to dispel British anxieties that their traders might be regulated, Congress held firm to the idea that “no citizen, or Explanatory Article, Am. St. Pap., For. Rel., 1: 552–3; J. G. Simcoe to R. G. England, June 1, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 285. 48 Stevens, Northwest Fur Trade, 119. 49 Act of July 22, 1790, ch. 33, 1 Stat., 137–8. 50 Act of March 1, 1793, ch. 19, 1 Stat., 329; William Hull circular letter, December 16, 1809, reel 1, Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of War Relating to Indian Affairs, 1800–1823 (hereafter LRSW-IA), RG 75, NARA. 51 Indiana Territorial Act to Tax Indian Traders, [August 1805] and William Henry Harrison’s Veto of Two Bills, August 22, 1805, folder 5, box 30, series 5, William H. English Family Papers, IHS. 52 Henry Dearborn to William Wells, May 18, 1804, reel 2, LRSW-IA, NARA. 47

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other person” could trade in Indian territory without a license.53 Diplomatic hurdles with Britain and institutional limitations to policing the region prevented territorial governors from interfering much with unlicensed British traders until 1799 when Congress passed an act to collect duties on imports and designated ports of entry. From Lake Champlain to Lake Michigan, eight points of entry monitored the movement of imports into the region, especially alcohol.54 Preoccupied with war in Europe, Britain voiced little complaint. Canadians expressed more concern as they lost their monopoly. Despite the interposition of the American state, foreign traders continued to possess a commanding share of the market at the turn of the century as Native Americans moved furs and goods along well-established routes that passed through Upper Canada and the St. Lawrence river valley. The network of forts built during and after Wayne’s campaign became the initial instruments of national-state authority in Indian country. Although the United States decommissioned some forts and depots in the Northwest in the years following 1795, the United States kept an impressive presence in the region. Congress added layers of federal influence when it legislated the erection of factories, publicly sponsored Indian trading houses, designed to attract and nurture lasting economic relationships with Indians while encouraging them to adopt American-styled commercial agriculture and cultural values. Appointed agents who operated trading houses, known as factors, could engage in business only with Native American customers, not settlers, white traders, or the military.55 Factors were responsible for oversight of their stores, compiling ledgers of transactions, and preserving good relations with their ­customers. A national supply agent filled requisitions by subcontracting to eastern and western merchants. Factors supplied goods to Indians on credit and, because the federal government financed the trading houses, factors had more credit to offer than regional merchants. The role of a trading house agent remained distinct from that of superintendents of Indian affairs, or Indian agents, even though their goals overlapped. Superintendents reported Native American movements and any intelligence of hostility to territorial governors and military commanders, but their position was mainly a diplomatic one. They met with chiefs, resolving grievances between various nations, as well as between nations and settlers. They settled land disputes, offered reparations, monitored for illegal surveying, and watched for settlers otherwise trespassing onto unceded lands. Superintendents also prodded chiefs and villages to abandon Indian subsistence patterns in favor of Euro-American practices of agriculture and husbandry.56 When they Act of May 19, 1796, ch. 30, 1 Stat., 470, 471; James Wilkinson announcement regarding trade in Louisiana, August 26, 1805, MPHC, 25: 217. 54 Act of March 2, 1799, ch. 22, 1 Stat., 627–704; Phillips, The Fur Trade, 2: 130–1. 55 Act of April 18, 1796, ch. 13, 1 Stat., 452–3. 56 Henry Dearborn to William Lyman, July 14, 1801, Reel 1, LRSW-IA, NARA 53

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advised villagers to rely on the factories, abandon the fur trade, and adopt a sedentary lifestyle grounded in individual land ownership, they ignored abundant evidence of agricultural work performed by Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Wyandot, and other communities. What made such civilization projects remarkable for Native Americans was the call for a reconfiguration of gender roles. Indian agents encouraged men to embrace what had been traditionally female labor associated with agriculture and husbandry and women to abandon their agricultural role, adopting spinning, weaving, and domestic chores instead.57 Congress provided superintendents of Indian affairs with a degree of power by mandating that tribal annuities flow through the Indian Agency, allowing agents greater leverage in shaping how annuities might be spent. To ease this transition to the proposed American system of farming, agents sent blacksmiths to fix tools and weaponry and instructors to train men and women in their new productive (gendered) roles.58 Factory agents complemented the work of Indian agents by providing manufactured items often in demand by Indians. Indians exchanged pelts, corn, maple sugar, and other products for manufactured goods. Factors stocked ceremonial items such as ribbon, paints, and tobacco; domestic tools such as needles and thread, different types of cloth, clothing, knives, and kettles; hunting gear such as saddles, powder, and shot; as well as agricultural instruments such as hoes and ploughs. Factors used this commercial relationship to pursue goals similar to those of Indian agents, only through indirect means. After centuries of trade with Europeans, many Native American communities chose not to dedicate community resources to learning how to create or repair manufactured items. Indeed why should they have when French and British representatives willingly provided those services? This system of supply and maintenance functioned smoothly only so long as economic relationships remained intimately wed to political reciprocity.59 As the balance of martial power fell away from Native American warriors, the union between economic and political goals crumbled as British and American traders gradually recast trade as a collection of discrete exchanges, relatively unencumbered by other obligations. Policymakers reasoned that For an in-depth discussion of women’s vital role in agriculture, see Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men. For an examination of Cherokee responses to American efforts at civilization, see Theda Perdue, “Women, Men and American Indian Policy: The Cherokee Response to ‘Civilization,’” in Nancy Shoemaker, ed., Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women (New York: Rutledge, 1995), 90–114. 58 Evidence suggests that blacksmiths in particular became jacks of all trades, mostly repairing kettles and pots and less frequently fixing firearms and farriering. John D. Light, “Tinker, Trader, Soldier, Smith: A Frontier Fur Trade Blacksmith Shop, Fort St. Joseph, Ontario, 1796–1812,” in John D. Light and Henry Unglik, eds., Frontier Fur Trade Blacksmith Shop, 1796–1812 (National Historic Parks and Sites Branch Parks Canada Environment Canada, 1984), 24, 27, 29, 31, 38. 59 White, Middle Ground, 484. 57

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Indians dependent on manufactured goods would frequent factories to sell furs but draw a greater value in goods. “[W]e shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt,” argued Thomas Jefferson, “because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of land.” Jefferson and others perceived training in what they called civilization as a form of benevolence and that, in time, so educated Indians would “incorporate as citizens of the United States” as they embraced yeoman-style farming. If that failed, Indians would choose to remove beyond the Mississippi, leaving behind land for white Americans.60 To encourage Indian men (and occasionally women) to sell their furs at American factories and not to individual traders, the federal government instructed factors to price their goods at cost, underbidding private traders. “At our trading houses,” Jefferson explained, “we mean to sell so low as merely to repay cost and charges so as neither to lessen or enlarge our capital.” In his eyes, factories would prove more competitive and thus appear the better choice compared to private companies and itinerant traders who “must gain” profits.61 Pelts thusly acquired could then be channeled to the domestic cottage industry of hatters and overseas to France, the Netherlands, Germany, and even China, which became a promising market for the early United States.62 Implementation of a factory system north of the Ohio River took time. During the late 1790s, the United States established its first factories in the southwestern borderland. Moderate success in engaging trade with Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, and other nations there spurred plans for an expansion of the system to the north. During the autumn of 1803, construction began on several buildings at Fort Wayne and Detroit.63 In earlier years, military officers there used what supplies and stores they possessed to achieve the goals of the factory system. Native Americans who wanted to purchase goods appealed directly to fort commanders, who managed small reserves of Indian supplies. In most cases, commanders distributed these goods more as presents of the national state than as commodities. With the erection of detached buildings, the factory system began to distance itself from the military, though it occasionally drew Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, February 27, 1803, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 71; Anthony F. C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 204–5. 61 Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, February 27, 1803, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 71. 62 Phillips, The Fur Trade, 2: 121, 167; John Mason to William Eustis, February 12, 1810, and John Mason to Samuel Smith, February 21, 1811, reel 2, Letters Sent by the Superintendent of Indian Trade, 1807–1823 (hereafter LSSIT), RG 75, NARA; John Mason to Mr. Bizat, John Mason to Charles Vogel, John Mason to Sylvanus Bourne, November 20, 1807, reel 1, LSSIT, NARA; Henry Dearborn to John Shee, October 9, 1806, reel 2, Letters Sent by the Secretary of War Relating to Indian Affairs, 1800–1824 (hereafter LSSW-IA), RG 75, NARA. 63 Henry Dearborn to William Henry Harrison, July 29, 1802, reel 1, LSSW-IA, NARA. 60

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on the soldiery for labor.64 Secretary of War Henry Dearborn recommended that a set of two buildings – a store and a home for the agent – be constructed for each factory, and that they be located approximately 200 yards from an associated garrison. The distinct space differentiated the commercial agenda of factories from the disciplinary and police force represented by the military. Yet by placing each factory “in full view of the Garrison,” Jeffersonian administrators aimed for Native Americans not to disassociate federal authority from the mission of the institution.65 Indian goods transported to northwestern factories followed two specific routes from the East. The first was already well worn by settlers and traders who began their journeys in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, funneling through Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh. From there, Indian stores and military supplies floated down the Ohio River to forts and settlements such as Fort Washington, Vincennes, and St. Louis. A second, newer route brought goods from New York up the Hudson River to Albany, where caravans skirted the southern foothills of the Adirondack Mountains as they traveled up the Mohawk River west toward the salting village at Salina, located immediately north of Syracuse. Later, the Erie Canal would follow a similar path. From near Salina, convoys traveled to Lake Ontario, where river and lake passage reduced transportation costs compared to hauling goods over land to Fort Black Rock (Buffalo, New York) more than 150 miles away. Once on the water, ships carried materials to Detroit, the supply hub for American forts along the Great Lakes, including Fort Wayne, Mackinac, and Chicago, as well as other minor outposts. These two parallel routes  – one across Pennsylvania to the Ohio River, and the other across New York to the Great Lakes – supplied two economic corridors in the Northwest. As webs of military roads and post roads expanded, and as settlement increased, threads of commerce began to link the two. Not until canals in Ohio and Indiana linked the Ohio Valley to New York City via the Erie Canal did the two become more successfully integrated.66 Once factors opened trading houses for business, they found area Native Americans ambivalent about the American presence. Some factories maintained a lively trade. From 1803 to the beginning of the War of 1812, Fort Wayne was the second most important trading house in the region after Detroit. Shawnee and Wyandot villagers who lived near the headwaters of the Auglaize, Sandusky, and Great Miami Rivers frequented the factory and participated in John Mason to John Johnson, May 19, 1809, reel 1, LSSIA, NARA. Dearborn suggested the factory be built about forty rods from the fort. Henry Dearborn to William Wells, June 4, 1802, reel 1, LSSW-IA, NARA. 66 Harry M. Scheiber, Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820–1861 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1969), 192, 198; Roger L. Ransom, “Public Canal Investment and the Opening of the Old Northwest,” in David C. Klingaman and Richard K. Vedder, eds., Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History: The Old Northwest (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), 255; Margaret Duden, “Internal Improvements in Indiana, 1818–1846,” Indiana Magazine of History, vol. 5, (Dec. 1909), 164. 64 65

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the American-influenced economy radiating out from the fort.67 The quantity of furs brought in on a yearly basis varied based on Indian manpower available and success of the hunts. From 1804 through 1810, Fort Wayne collected 7,232 deer skins and 46,338 raccoon skins. The price of these furs dropped during the first decade of the nineteenth century. But if a baseline of forty-seven cents for a deer skin and twenty-five cents for a raccoon skin is used – the lowest prices offered during the decade (1809) – then Native Americans collected at least $15,000 in cash and credit for these furs alone at Fort Wayne. They garnered an additional $1,340 for bear and otter pelts, valued at approximately two dollars each. Thousands of other furs also passed through the factory at Fort Wayne, including beaver, cat, mink, fox, wolf, and rabbit.68 Other Indian factories did not experience the same level of success as available game; market fluctuations for pelts and Native American trading preferences shaped local conditions. After 1803, the United States gradually established trading houses at Kaskaskia, Chicago, Michilimackinac (Mackinac), Detroit, and Sandusky. Ojibwa and Ottawa hunters near Mackinac specialized in bringing in bear, beaver, martin, and mink, while their Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware, and Potawatomi counterparts near the factories at Detroit and Sandusky favored raccoon and muskrat. Deer tended to fall out of favor among hunters as prices for their furs plummeted by 1809. In addition to pelts, Indian women and their families manufactured goods such as maple sugar, beeswax, moccasins, and feathers, which they traded to factories for credit.69 Factors hoped to retain customers by attaching men to a cycle of credit and debt that would keep them coming through their shop doors. When men brought furs to the factory, they purchased items to carry themselves and their villages through the ensuing season. At times, the value of these purchases outweighed the value of the furs they delivered. On September 10, 1805, John Johnson, the factor at Fort Wayne, reported that different Native Americans owed the factory $972 for items purchased there on credit. The diversity of products generated by Indian families offered them a strategy to meet the vagaries and fluctuations of the market. If fur prices became depressed, increased maple sugar and other products could make up the Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, 103. Furs and Peltry Forwarded from Fort Wayne, April 14, 1804, April 23, 1805, May 13, 1806, May 17 and June 7, 1807, March/April/May 1808, May 1/31, 1809, May/June 1810, in Bert J. Griswold, ed., Fort Wayne: Gateway of the West, 1802–1813 (Indianapolis: Historical Bureau of the Indiana Library and Historical Department, 1927), 433–4, 435, 453–4, 480–2, 504–7, 563–4, 580–1; An Inventory of Merchandise on Hand at the Fort Wayne Factory, September 8, 1805, July 1, 1806, July 6, 1807, June 30, 1808, March 31, 1809, October 5, 1809, March 31, 1810, Fort Wayne, 450–1, 466–7, 499, 533, 550, 578, 607, Average Prices given for Furs and Peltries by the Traders at Fort Wayne, February 8, 1806, Fort Wayne, 595. 69 Russell M. Magnaghi, “Michigan’s Indian Factory at Detroit, 1802–1805,” Inland Seas, vol. 38 (Fall 1982), 174; Russell M. Magnaghi, “Michigan’s Indian Factory at Mackinac, 1808–1812,” Inland Seas, vol. 39 (Spring 1983), 24–5; Russell M. Magnaghi, “The Sandusky Indian Factory, 1806–1812,” Inland Seas, vol. 39 (Fall 1983), 176. 67 68

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difference, allowing individuals and communities to enter the market more competitively and on terms more suitable to them. Although local market conditions and the availability of British traders helped shape patterns of Indian commerce in proximity to the international border, variations in debt at American factories suggest that individual Indians engaged factories strategically, largely avoiding the patterns of debt federal policy makers had intended. Nowhere was this more so than at Mackinac in 1809 where the factor, J. B. Varnum, became frustrated by the lack of Native Americans in the region. “I have sold but very few goods since I opened the factory,” he fretted.70 Most Indians, he noted, had moved elsewhere and those who remained tended to frequent trading houses at British Fort St. Joseph, helping explain why he had accumulated only $80 of Indian debt.71 Scattered Ojibwa villages near the eastern shore of Lakes Superior preferred to deal with their established British allies than the upstart Americans. After 1800, Ojibwa villages south of Saginaw Bay tended to trade with Americans in Detroit rather than their former British partners.72 Despite a reticence by many northern Ojibwa to trade with Americans, other nations who historically trekked to Michilimackinac chose to frequent forts in Illinois and Wisconsin. Varnum recommended that some of his factory’s “inactive Capital” be shipped to Chicago where it might be of more use to Potawatomi, Menominee, Kickapoo, and other tribes.73 While designed for Indian trade, federal factories also garnered business from soldiers, officers, settlers, itinerant laborers, and private traders. The volume of white trade varied across factories, with proximity to settlements an important contributing determinant. In 1805, while Native Americans owed just less than $1,000 to the Fort Wayne factory, military personnel and local businessmen and settlers collectively owed $518.84.74 The following year, “different Indians” had an outstanding balance of $1,203, more than one-third of the entire debt owed to the Fort Wayne factory. Most of the remaining debt derived from loans made to other factories and government agencies.75 At other factories as well, garrison residents obtained supplemental food and supplies at times representing one-quarter to one-half of all materials distributed from the institution.76 The demand among soldiers, settlers, and traders for goods at factories surprised federal administrators. “It never was contemplated to convert our J. B. Varnum to General J. Mason, February 12, 1810, Letters Received by the Superintendent of Indian Trade, 1806–1824 (hereafter LRSIT), T58, NARA. 71 Magnaghi, “Michigan’s Indian Factory at Mackinac,” 25. 72 Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, 97. 73 J. B. Varnum to General J. Mason, February 12, 1810, LRSIT, NARA. 74 Debts due the Fort Wayne Factory, September 10, 1805, Colonel John Johnston’s Indian Agency Account Book, 1802–11, Fort Wayne, 451. 75 Debts due the Factory, July 1, 1806, Fort Wayne, 467. 76 Magnaghi, “Michigan’s Indian Factory at Mackinac,” 27; Magnaghi, “The Sandusky Indian Factory,” 176. 70

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Indian Factories into Stores for supplying the white Inhabitants, or the troops in the vicinity,” admitted Secretary of War Henry Dearborn in 1803.77 As factors adjusted to economic exigencies of the early West by engaging in a “constant practice” of selling to soldiers and local populations, Dearborn inched not-for-profit factories toward a commercial agenda by adding mark-ups of ten percent to twenty-five percent for non-Indians.78 Doing so entailed a certain degree of risk, especially when white customers became indebted to the factory. He therefore decreed that credit accounts should not be opened for “the troops & other white people,” for whom sales should be made “for ready money.” Already southern factories at Georgia and Tellico had accrued significant debts from settlers and soldiers and Dearborn wanted to prevent a repeat occurrence at the northern institutions.79 Factory records obscure the effects of such pricing rules because factors, as one experienced trader described, engaged in “capricious” rates of sale. Nevertheless, it is clear from ledgers that credit continued to be offered to non-Indians despite regulations to the contrary.80 Refusals of factors to comply with the policy did not diminish the role of the federal government in contributing to economic change in Indian country. Rather, Dearborn reconciled the regulatory and commercial functions of the factory system. The integration of white consumers into the clientele enhanced the role of factories as a source for supplies. By offering even limited credit for goods, factories encouraged and facilitated white settlement near these installations and provided emigrants indirect access to eastern and western markets through the factory requisition network. Neither did an expanded mission for factories detract from their primary purpose. By 1805, the United States garnered a significant share of the fur market from Britain south of the Great Lakes. The blockade of Europe in 1806, part of the Napoleonic War, exacerbated declining European demand for furs, causing prices to plummet.81 In contrast, demand remained stable among U.S. manufacturers and merchants tapping Asian markets, drawing more Indian communities into the American system.82 Weakened fur companies in British Henry Dearborn to William Irvine, April 11, 1803, reel 1, LSSW-IA, NARA. Ramsay Crooks to the Committee of the Senate on Indian Affairs, January 23, 1822, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 2: 329; Henry Dearborn to Thomas Peterkin, March 24, 1803, reel 1, LSSW-IA, NARA; John Mason to David Hogg, December 12, 1807, reel 1, LSSIT, NARA. 79 Henry Dearborn to William Irvine, April 11, 1803, reel 1, LSSW-IA, NARA; John Mason to Matthew Irwin, September 9, 1808, LSSIT, NARA. 80 Ramsay Crooks to the Committee of the Senate on Indian Affairs, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 2: 330. 81 Ann Carlos, “The Causes and Origins of the North American Fur Trade Rivalry: 1804–1810,” Journal of Economic History, vol. 41 (Dec. 1981), 781, 783; Alexander Henry to John Askin, March 24, 1807, in Milo Milton Quaife, ed., The John Askin Papers, vol. 2 (Detroit: Detroit Library Commission, 1928–31), 544. 82 Philip Lecuyer to Jean Baptiste, May 19, 1804, folder 7, box 2, Lasselle Collection, ISL; Jacques Lasselle to Jean Baptiste Leplante, July 17, 1805, folder 1, box 3, Lasselle Collection, ISL; Marshall to Louis Nicolas Fortin, February 23, 1808, and Fortin to Antoine Marchal, April 10, 77 78

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Canada, especially the North West Company and Hudson Bay Company, opened the door for opportunists like John Jacob Astor to raise capital and capture a greater portion of the trade. Astor took advantage of this moment and lobbied for a corporate charter from the United States. Confronting arguments that private traders would not espouse the interests of the national state, Astor painted an appealing portrait of hired men who would act as private traders while also representing the “views & wishes of Government.”83 In many ways private traders complemented the role of federal factories. Licensed traders ranged from village to village, building rapports with elders and timing their visits to coincide with the productive cycle. In the spring, they arrived eager to collect fresh peltries and maple sugar. In autumn, they purchased surplus corn and furs from summer hunts. Periodically during the year, traders reappeared in villages to sell goods. As itinerants, they had greater access to Native American communities than the fixed installations of the factory system. Some scholars have characterized these traders as “agents of empire” because they accelerated a process of dependency among their Native American clientele that improved conditions for Indian removal.84 Yet entrepreneurial traders found success in large measure because of the federal institutional support they received. At times that support was coercive influence from nearby Fort Wayne while at others it manifested itself as the profits they enjoyed from trade after the distribution of treaty presents and annuities.85 Even then, it might be more accurate to adopt Richard White’s characterization of Indians’ reliance rather than dependency on European and American trade goods. Private traders certainly engaged in exploitative practices, but Indians understood they possessed alternatives, including federal factories, gift exchanges, theft, and extortion.86 William Henry Harrison highlighted this attitude when he observed that many Indians considered traders “entirely at their mercy, and they frequently rob and abuse them.”87 Just as federal factories were limited in their ability to transform the regional economy, so too were private traders. During the first decade of the nineteenth century, competition for furs in the northern trans-Appalachian West was more intense than any time since just prior to the Seven Years War. British and American private traders alike roamed through western villages gathering furs and selling their merchandise. 1808, folder 7, box 3, Lasselle Collection, ISL; John Mason to Thomas Bourke, July 24, 1809, and John Mason to Samuel Smith, February 21, 1811, reel 2, LSSIT, NARA. 83 For a description of Astor’s politicking, see Phillips, The Fur Trade, 2: 132–41. John Jacob Astor to Thomas Jefferson, February 27, 1808, reel 3, Letters Received by the Secretary of War, Unregistered Series, 1789–1861 (hereafter LRSW-U), RG 107, NARA. 84 John Lauritz Larson and David G. Vanderstel, “Agent of Empire: William Connor on the Indiana Frontier, 1800–1855,” Indiana Magazine of History, vol. 80 (Dec. 1984), 308–9. 85 Lauritz and Vanderstel, “Agent of Empire,” 309. 86 White, Middle Ground, 484. 87 William Henry Harrison to the Secretary of War, February 26, 1802, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 44.

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Upper Canadian and American agents, public and private, competed to draw Native Americans to their respective systems. Even French traders, while comparatively small in number, continued to operate, especially in the Mississippi Valley. Despite American hopes that loose associations between commercial factories and military forts would bring order and control to the West, they did not. Instead, military commanders, Indian agents, and factors saw their economic and social influence diminish outside the immediate vicinity of their facilities. As British companies reeled from the disruptions to trade caused in part by the Napoleonic War, several factors coalesced to limit the potential share of the fur trade and possible influence that the United States might otherwise have experienced in Indian communities. Although the United States promised to remove trespassing white settlers and traders from Indian country and Congress passed legislation to that effect, recurrent violations suggested an unwillingness of federal authorities to fulfill their treaty obligations.88 Indian agents routinely bungled diplomatic situations when representing that the United States would act as a new “father” for western nations. Their job was not made easier as Republican efforts to eliminate the national debt reduced budgets, circumscribing their ability to fulfil policy goals.89 Supply complications further tarnished the reputation of the United States. Unlike the military, which drew heavily on the western economy for provisional support, the Indian Agency and factories primarily relied on eastern markets. William Linnard, a military agent in Philadelphia who subcontracted to supply these two agencies in the Northwest and the Southwest, frequently experienced difficulties collecting and delivering materials on time.90 Given that most trade occurred during spring and autumn as communities prepared for planting and hunting, men and women who relied on promises that tools or other stock would be available could find themselves easily disappointed. Items in high demand, especially those purchased by Indians and local whites, frequently were sold out. Finally, when available, private American traders and factories rarely offered trade goods intended for Native American consumers of equivalent quality compared to British competitors.91 The imposition of tariffs on imported British goods, beginning in 1799, also stirred negative attitudes toward the United States. The sweeping legislation established ports of entry, customs houses, and regulation of imports, but portions of the bill aimed at attenuating commercial and diplomatic bonds Britons might enjoy with Native American communities so as to corner a larger share Act of March 30, 1802, ch. 13, 2 Stat., 141. Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), 289; Henry Dearborn to William Wells, March 7, 1803, reel 1, and Secretary of War to William Hull, November 3, 1806, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA. 90 Henry Dearborn to William Linnard, August 12, 1802, reel 1, LSSW-IA, NARA. 91 Ramsay Crooks to the Committee of the Senate on Indian Affairs, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 2: 329. 88 89

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of the fur market for American traders and the factory system.92 North of the Ohio River, most British goods came through Detroit, but a smaller percentage made their way through Presque Isle (Erie, Pennsylvania) and later Chicago, among other ports of entry. According to Montreal traders, they occasionally spent more than $30,000 per year in duties at Mackinac alone.93 While designed to make business in the West more expensive for British traders, Native Americans recognized the effect higher prices had on their communities and some individuals blamed the United States rather than their trading partner. One astute chief concluded that such duties were “intended to impoverish and reduce the Indians,” one component in a matrix of policies fashioned “to destroy them” and “take possession of their lands.”94 The process for distributing annuity payments spawned its own problems, further souring the disposition of Indians toward the United States. Beginning with the Treaty of Greenville, the United States promised each nation an annual annuity. Tribes with larger populations, such as the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandot, each received $1,000, while Kickapoo, Wea, Eel River, Piankshaw, and Kaskaskia tribes with fewer people collected $500. Each year, chiefs decided whether they wanted to receive their annuities in goods or in specie. Although the treaty stipulated that funds were to encourage the development of husbandry and agriculture, Timothy Pickering acknowledged that that annuities also were “to compensate” tribes “for the loss of the Game” resulting from land cessions.95 American officials expected the money to be spent to create more sedentary lives modeled on intensive, American-style farming techniques rather than be held in trust.96 Much of the money tended to end up in the hands of factors, traders, and merchants who sold manufactured goods and other items.97 By the terms of the Treaty of Greenville alone, the federal government dispensed over $10,000 annually into the western economy, an amount which increased as further land cessions mandated additional annuities. In sum, from 1795 to 1810, the United States sent more than $245,950 worth of cash and merchandise to the various tribes in fulfillment of treaty obligations.98 Act of March 2, 1799, ch. 22, 1 Stat., 627–704. Memorial of Montreal Merchants to Thomas Dunn, November 8, 1805, MPHC, 25: 219. 94 William Henry Harrison to the Secretary of War, February 19, 1802, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 38. 95 Treaty of Greenville, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 563; Timothy Pickering to Anthony Wayne, April 8, 1795, Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, 394. 96 For examples of items and cash sent to the various tribes see William Eustis to John Johnston, May 12, 1810, reel 1, folder 2, box 1, John Johnston Papers, 1801–60, OHS; William Eustis to Tenche Coxe, February 6, 1811, reel 3, LSSW-IA, NARA; Annuities paid to the Miami, Delaware, Eel River, and Putawatimies, October 6, 1809, reel 24, and William Wells to Henry Dearborn, October 20, 1807, reel 15, LRSW-M, NARA. 97 V. Smith to James Green, May 19, 1802, MPHC, 23: 12; Wyandot Chiefs Leatherlips and Bowl to James Madison, December 3, 1809, reel 33, LRSW-M, NARA. 98 Treaties with the Wyandot, etc., August 3, 1795, Delawares etc., June 7, 1803, Kaskaskia, August 13, 1803, Delaware, August 18, 1804, Piankshaw, August 27, 1804, Sac and Fox, 92 93

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Most nations viewed annuities as a diplomatic requirement, part of America’s responsibility to the tradition of the middle ground, if not a contractual obligation. In contrast, many federal agents portrayed these annuities as nonbinding gifts that could be rescinded if tribes appeared to violate treaty terms. By punishing a whole tribe rather than individuals, administrators commonly sought to prompt more satisfactory internal discipline, to pressure tribal leaders into acquiescing to American policy goals, or to obtain retribution for property damage.99 In September 1802, reports reached Philadelphia that some Potawatomi not only had “an unfriendly disposition” toward the United States, but that some had “actually commenced hostilities.” Secretary of War Henry Dearborn ordered Indiana territorial governor William Henry Harrison that the “annuities for the present year ought not to be paid the Pottawattama [sic] until they have made full and ample satisfaction for the murders committed by them.”100 In 1807, the secretary of war decided to subtract from the Shawnee and Wyandot annuities $275 and $95, respectively, amounts equal to the value of horses allegedly stolen by members of those tribes a decade earlier.101 Jefferson’s administration later rescinded these deductions and paid each annuity in full. Dearborn believed that the United States could leverage tribes through their annuities, an idea assuming Indian dependence on those goods. Along with other agents of the federal government, Dearborn incorrectly judged the depth of economic influence the United States possessed in its gift-giving and annuity practices. While the federal government struggled to extend its authority into Indian country, many Native American communities debated how they should reconcile the growing American presence in the West. Little Turtle (Miami), Black Hoof (Shawnee), Tarhe (Wyandot), and Five Medals (Potawatomi) generally supported adopting elements of American farming techniques. Pecanne and Richardville (Miami), Main Poc and Turkey Foot (Potawatomi), and ­ultimately Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh (Shawnee), rejected those arguments, choosing instead to express hostility toward the United States and accomodationist chiefs. Others like Blue Jacket searched for an alternative strategy somewhere between these positions. From his village near Detroit, he traded extensively and farmed like his British and American neighbors. Yet ­ ovember 3, 1804, Wyandot, etc., July 4, 1805, Delaware, etc., August 21, 1805, N ­Piankashaw, December 13, 1805, Ottawa, etc., November 17, 1807, Supplemental Treaty with the Miami, etc., September 13, 1809, Wea, October 26, 1809, Kickapoo, December 9, 1809, in Charles J. Kappler, ed., Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 39–45, 64–5, 67–8, 70–2, 72–3, 74–7, 77–8, 80–2, 89, 92–5, 103–4, 104–5. 99 The Chiefs and Head men of the Shawanoese to the Friends, the Quakers of Baltimore, April 10, 1809, enclosed in John Johnston to William Eustis, April 15, 1809, and William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, October 3, 1809, reel 24, LRSW-M, NARA; William Eustis to John Johnston, May 12, 1810, reel 1, folder 2, box 1, John Johnston Papers, 1801–1860, OHS. 100 Henry Dearborn to William Henry Harrison, September 3, 1802, reel 1, LSSW-IA, NARA. 101 Secretary of War to William Hull, March 24, 1807, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA.

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he also strove to ­maintain Native American autonomy and worked to foster a ­resurgence of the pan-Indian confederacy that had been so beneficial prior to Fallen Timbers.102 Although accommodationist factions represented a minority within Indian communities, they often had the most assertive voices and positioned themselves to have a greater influence over annuities. Little Turtle took advantage of his close relationship with Indian agent William Wells – who had married his daughter – to garner agricultural training and tools for the Miami.103 Wells too believed that the best interests of the Miami lay in economic accommodation. While on a trip to Washington, DC, Little Turtle and Five Medals met with Quaker missionaries and endorsed the Society of Friends offer to send someone to their villages. They admitted, however, that “the minds of our people are not as much inclined toward the cultivation of the land as we could wish them.”104 Through a clever use of language, Little Turtle and Five Medals appealed to the Friends by tapping into stereotypes of hunter-gatherer Indians even as Miami and Potawatomi communities depended heavily upon agriculture managed by the labor of women.105 It noteworthy that when a party of missionaries arrived at Fort Wayne in 1804 to meet Little Turtle and his community, Miami women sat in the center of the circle.106 Little Turtle expressed his desire that, with the help of the Society of Friends, he would “finally be able to convince our young men that this is the plan . . . to adopt to get our living.”107 Miami women were a great obstacle to transforming agricultural practices, although he offered only passing regard to their responsibility in community decision making. Prior to the Quakers’ arrival, Little Turtle and Five Medals determined to situate Philip Dennis, the Quaker missionary who would operate the farm and instruct interested parties, far from their villages. They likely wanted to avoid potential violence from “younger brothers” who might have regarded Dennis as a threat to their gendered standing within their community.108 For one year, Dennis remained at a farm thirty-two miles from Fort John Sugden, Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 241. 103 Harvey Lewis Carter, Life and Times of Little Turtle: First Sagamore of the Wabash (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 103. 104 Joseph E. Walker, ed., “Plowshares and Pruning Hooks for the Miami and Potawatomi: The Journal of Gerard T. Hopkins, 1804,” Ohio History, vol. 88 (Fall 1979), 366; Society of Friends, Quaker Biographies: A Series of Sketches, Chiefly Biographical, Concerning Members of the Society of Friends, from the Seventeenth Century to More Recent Times, vol. III (Philadelphia: Representatives of the Religious Society of Friends for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, 1912), 128–31. 105 Daniel K. Richter, “‘Believing That Many of the Red People Suffer Much for the Want of Food’: Hunting, Agriculture, and a Quaker Construction of Indianness in the Early Republic,” JER, vol. 19 (Winter 1999), 603. 106 Walker, ed., “Journal of Gerard T. Hopkins,” 388. 107 Ibid., 394. 108 Ibid., 395. 102

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Wayne where he offered demonstrations of how to manage livestock and sow, grow, and harvest crops using horse-driven plows. Miami men watched Dennis work, but only about ten families moved to the farm.109 Dennis was one in a a patchwork of reformist enterprises to transform the productive model of Native Americans. In the Connecticut Reserve, Presbyterian minister Joseph Badger founded a school to “encourage agriculture and domestic manufactures,” as well as “sobriety, industry and sound morals” among Wyandot Indians.110 In Detroit, Gabriel Richard, pastor of the Catholic Society, established a school for Ojibwa and Wyandot children, though there is some evidence it instructed white children as well. The plan for the school was to teach “Literature and useful arts in that quarter of the American Dominions,” where “young lads” would learn “agriculture and useful trades” and “young girls to learn to spin, weave, sow and other household arts, & to learn to speak our language.”111 Maryland Quakeress Catherine Shaw demonstrated that civilization projects were not the sole domain of men. In 1806, she brought here reformist zeal to northern Indiana where she received materials and support from Indian agent William Wells.112 Among the Sauk and Fox Indians, William Ewing spoiled his appointment to develop agriculture by engaging in villainous trade with Indian men.113 At Wapakoneta in 1802, Black Hoof convinced some of his fellow Shawnee that adopting elements of European agriculture would benefit them all.114 His timing was fortuitous, if not calculated. That year, fur prices began to decline as economic disruptions resulting from war in Europe began to take a toll on the market. To compensate for lower returns, hunters brought more pelts to American factories, further slumping prices.115 While Wapakoneta experienced economic decline, American settlements to the south and east seemed to blossom.116 Black Hoof lobbied for assistance from the American government, which he received in 1807. His community also obtained unabashed support from local white settlers who argued that “the money thus Expended” by the federal government at Wapakoneta “may save an hundred times as much, Richter, “‘Believing That Many of the Red People Suffer Much for the Want of Food,’” 605; Carter, Life and Times of Little Turtle, 199; Rafert, Miami Indians of Indiana, 70. 110 Henry Dearborn to John Johnston, February 11, 1807, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA. 111 Thomas Jefferson to Little Bear, Chief of the Chippaway nation, n.d., enclosed in Henry Dearborn to Captain Hendricks, December 27, 1808, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA; Clarence M. Burton, William Stocking, and Gordon K. Miller, eds., The City of Detroit Michigan, 1701– 1922, vol. I (Detroit: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1922), 728–9. 112 Henry Dearborn to William Wells and Henry Dearborn to Catherine Shaw, both August 18, 1806, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA. 113 Henry Dearborn to William Henry Harrison, March 18, 1805, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA; William T. Hagen, The Sac and Fox Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 34–5. 114 R. David Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 17. 115 John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 103–4. 116 Sugden, Blue Jacket, 231. 109

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and Perhaps much Bloodshed Prevented, by thus cultivating their Friendship and bringing them into a state of civilization.”117 To answer Black Hoof’s call, Indian Agency officials worked with Quaker missionaries, who sent William Kirk to continue the work in the region begun by Dennis.118 Kirk had been active in the West, initiating two agricultural programs. One had been with Potawatomi villages in northern Indiana and southern Michigan, but it never got off the ground despite efforts made by Five Medals, Topinbee, and Winamek to acquire requisite tools.119 His other attempt had been with the Miami. There, Kirk began a training program, but met stiff resistance from Little Turtle and Wells. Neither appreciated Kirk’s presence, probably because he had spent nearly $3,000 of the tribe’s annuity on supplies and equipment without consulting either of them.120 Because Kirk directly challenged their control of annuities, they pushed him out the door. In 1806, Kirk arrived in Wapakoneta under the watchful eye of federal officials and was well received except for lingering protests by Little Turtle and Wells.121 Like Dennis, he managed a successful farm, including a saw and grist mill, but did so with the help of only a handful of Shawnee families.122 Although scholars tend to characterize missionary-based civilization projects as private endeavors, they were, in fact, partnerships with the federal government. Indian agents coordinated with missionaries, monitored progress and setbacks among Indians, and passed on reports to their superiors. Federal oversight, even if government did not directly implement programs, was critical not only to ensure the safety of the missionaries but to gauge the success of the civilization program. When discrepancies in accounting procedures appeared at Kirk’s farm at Wapakoneta in 1808, the Indian Agency single-handedly dismantled the program and repossessed materials considered property of the federal government.123 Black Hoof nevertheless remained resolute and lobbied Subscribers of the frontier counties of the State of Ohio to the President of the United States and the Secretary of the War Department, September 25, 1808, reel 25, LRSW-M, NARA. 118 Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet, 18; Henry Dearborn to William Wells, February 28, 1806, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA. 119 Edmunds, Potawatomis, 162–3. 120 Carter, Life and Times of Little Turtle, 200–1; William Wells to Henry Dearborn, August 20, 1807, reel 15, LRSW-M, NARA. 121 Henry Dearborn to Charles Jouett, August 6, 1807, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA. 122 Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 134–5; John Johnston to William Eustis, April 15, 1809, and enclosure The Chiefs and Head men of the Shawanoese Tribe of Indians to the President of the United States and the Secretary of War, April 10, 1809, enclosed in John Johnston to William Eustis, April 15, 1809, reel 24, LRSW-M, NARA. 123 Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet, 18–19; William Kirk to Henry Dearborn, December 10, 1808, reel 25, LRSW-M, NARA; William Eustis to John Johnston, May 13, 1809, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA. 117

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the national government to restart the program fully, a goal which he would obtain only after the War of 1812.124 Unlike Shawnee at Wapakoneta, western Potawatomi advocates of agricultural training could not bring missionaries to their villages because they lacked control over their annuities. After the Treaty of Greenville, the United States hoped to dispense annuities to each tribe at Detroit during autumn. Many tribal elders justifiably viewed such a journey to Detroit as an expensive inconvenience that interfered with their productive rhythms. For years, Wells argued on behalf of Little Turtle and his supporters to have Miami monies distributed at Fort Wayne instead of Detroit to save on expenses. The place where the federal government sent annuities was important because chiefs who directly received them held greater influence over how they were used and how they were distributed.125 Executors of tribal annuities typically allocated to themselves and their supporters a disproportionate share, so chiefs interested in purchasing equipment, livestock, and materials held a particular interest in gaining control of the funds. Black Hoof repeatedly complained to the Indian Agency that he received a lesser portion of annuities compared to his rival Blue Jacket, who lived close to Detroit, and other leaders echoed the tenor of his grievance.126 Among the Potawatomi, annuities mostly went to eastern villages near Detroit, which usually received the money first.127 Potawatomi villages from northern Indiana stretching through Wisconsin – Five Medals’ villages among them – saw few benefits from government money. For this reason, Five Medals, with other Potawatomi chiefs, entered into a partnership of convenience with Little Turtle, advocating annuities be distributed at Fort Wayne so as to break the control of eastern bands even as Little Turtle would have gained more concentrated control of Miami annuities.128 By the distribution of annuities in 1807, tribal leaders who advocated accommodation – though they represented a minority – controlled the lion’s share of federal monies entering Indian country. Federal agents promoting civilization had little motivation to propose a more equitable distribution of annuities, which would have undermined that program.129 Richter, “‘Believing That Many of the Red People Suffer Much for the Want of Food,’” 605; The Shawanoes to the President of the United States and Secretary of War, December 1, 1808, reel 25, LRSW-M, NARA. 125 See for instance, William Hull to Henry Dearborn, November 18, 1807, reel 8, and the Chiefs and Head men of the Shawanoese to the Friends, the Quakers of Baltimore, April 10, 1809, enclosed in John Johnston to William Eustis, April 15, 1809, reel 24, LRSW-M, NARA. 126 White, Middle Ground, 495; Speech of Ottawas, October 5, 1811, reel 1, LRSW-IA, NARA. 127 William Wells to Henry Dearborn, September 30, 1807, reel 15, LRSW-M, NARA. 128 Edmunds, Potawatomis, 159–8; William Henry Harrison to Charles Jouet, January 15, 1803, folder 9, box 1, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, 1791–1864, IHS; Little Turtle receipt for annuities due to the Miami Tribe of Indians for 1810, October 4, 1810, box: 1798– 1819, United States History Papers, LL. 129 William Henry Harrison to Henry Dearborn, November 9, 1808, folder 14, box 1, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, 1791–1864, IHS. 124

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Ultimately, federally supported civilization projects north of the Ohio River failed to meet their objectives, even among most accommodationist sympathizers, because the gender hurdles proved too much to overcome. Although young men occasionally participated with the reformers, most Indian men refused to alter their gendered mapping of labor. In the South, Indian men who embraced commercial agriculture purchased slaves to perform effeminizing agricultural work rather than do it themselves. In the northern Indian country AfricanAmerican slaves were harder to come by, leading a few communities to hire white men to work for them.130 In the Wyandot community of Maguago near Detroit, Canadian farmers with their own teams of horses and oxen plowed Wyandot cornfields, charging, in the mind of one observer, “an extravagant rate.”131 Although reformers expected both Indian men and women to change their productive habits, in their eyes, the measured success of civilization projects rested more heavily on shoulders of Indian men. Both white and Indian reformers gauged male behavior as indicative of progress or backsliding and used the same in their letters as proof of their achievements.132 Even as evidence mounted demonstrating the failure of the civilization program north of the Ohio River, federal administrators held firm to their belief that commerce alone could sway Native American allegiances, keeping economics at the forefront of U.S. Indian policy. Such an emphasis on trade magnified the perceived importance of providing regulatory measures to oversee commerce in Indian country. Because unlicensed foreign nationals traversed the region as regularly as licensed traders, Secretary of War Henry Dearborn routinely confronted the limitations of federal authority during the first decade of the nineteenth century. In April 1803, he ordered William Henry Harrison, territorial governor of Indiana, to deport unlicensed “foreign agents” and “mischevious” licensed traders.133 Individuals normally obtained licenses by paying a bond to the territorial governor. Other federal officials, such as Indian agents, distributed them from time to time when they happened to have blank licenses, but often charged a fee in addition to the bond for the “trouble” of performing a job not typically assigned to them.134 British, French, and American aspirants who thought it advantageous to obtain licenses to legitimate their businesses in the eyes of the national state found them hard to come by because of the limited number of places where they could be obtained and the great distances traveled to get there.135 Others worried that receiving a license would bring William Wells to Henry Dearborn, March 31, 1807, reel 14, LRSW-M, NARA. Jacob Visgar to William Hull, October 12, 1807, reel 8, LRSW-M, NARA. 132 Wyandot Speech, April 20, 1809, reel 4, LRSW-U, NARA. 133 Henry Dearborn to William Henry Harrison, April 15, 1805, reel 1, LSSW-IA, NARA. 134 For an example of a license, see Trader’s License, Francois Busseron, October 8, 1801, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 34; William Henry Harrison to John Campbell, February 10, 1808, box 1, folder 14, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, 1791–1864, IHS. 135 Stanley Griswold to Edward Tiffin, May 27, 1800, folder 3, box 1, Edward Tiffin Papers, OHS. 130 131

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their smuggling to the attention of the American government. When caught, foreign transgressors usually invoked Jay’s Treaty in an attempt to delegitimize the confiscation of their merchandise by customs officers, military agents, or Indian agents.136 By 1808, many individuals and companies trading in the West did so without a license, either to reduce expenses or simply because they could get away with it.137 The United States found it extremely problematic to manage western trade across the expansive international border. Both it and Upper Canada ­understood the disruptive potential inherent in a porous bordered land. Citizens, subjects, and Native Americans demonstrated an aptitude for using the border to escape legal entanglements, making enforcement challenging. In 1797, James Wilkinson wrote to Upper Canadian political leaders, warning them not to intensify the instability of the border, otherwise his “Civil Authority will be found too feeble to repress the inclinations & to control the caprices of the great Mass of the Inhabitants, who will be followed in every excess by their numerous friends & relatives among the Savages.”138 But even when American and British officials were in a position to exert federal or imperial authority, they occasionally chose not to if it served their interests.139 As Henry Dearborn acknowledged, if someone committed a crime in Upper Canada and the criminal escaped into the United States, “our laws do not take cognizance of the offense.” While an Indian who fell victim to a crime might watch American agents do what they could to “procure redress” for him (or her), an Upper Canadian in a similar circumstance would have little support, except “on principles of friendship.”140 Along the international border, enforcement mechanisms that typically characterized federal authority in Indian country were deployed arbitrarily. But at moments they received greater attention, as they did in 1808 when word that British agents associated with the Mackinac Company frequented the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. In response, the Jefferson administration ordered the erection of Fort Madison in presentday Iowa, an early illustration of the expansion of federal institutions further into the recently purchased Louisiana Territory.141 Although the international border around Lake Erie held potential for acute expressions of national-state authority, irregular management made Postscript, August 18, 1808, in George Hoffman and Samuel Abbott to Henry Dearborn, August 15, 1808, reel 23, LRSW-M, NARA. 137 George Hoffman and Samuel Abbott to William Henry Harrison, August 15, 1808, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 301–2. 138 James Wilkinson to the Justices of His Britannic Majestys [sic] Western District Upper Canada, July 16, 1797, Askin Papers, 2: 115. 139 J. G. Simcoe to Alexander McKee, May 3, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 258. 140 Henry Dearborn to Jasper Parish, January 18, 1805, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA. 141 Meriwether Lewis to John Campbell, June 2, 1808 and John Campbell to Henry Dearborn, April 7, 1808, reel 23, LRSW-M, NARA. 136

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it a sanctuary and device for individuals wrestling with the commercial ­transformation of the region. Settlers and Native Americans alike used the border to protect themselves from creditors. John Askin, a Detroit merchant and British, for example, believed that a man indebted to him, Amable Latour, whose loyalty to the crown had been called into question, would abscond once he crossed from Detroit to Ohio. In a region where commerce and land speculation hinged in webs of credit, geographic mobility added dimensions of risk. “I never got a penny from him nor ever will if you do not find the means of stopping” him from leaving, he wrote his associate in 1795.142 Nearly ten years later, Askin convinced himself that the possibility of collecting debts owed to him in the United States would be next to impossible. Even if he were able to bring the case to court, he believed American juries would rather support their neighbors than him, a British subject.143 Although they did not encounter each other, Askin likely would have approved of the contemporary observations of Presbyterian missionary Joseph Badger as he toured the northern Ohio country. As he scouted Wyandot villages on the outskirts of the Connecticut land reserve, he excoriated “the rabble of those who have escaped their creditors, or are here to make [the] same thing out of the Indians are the greatest disadvantage to those people, and I may say with propriety, the greatest curse.”144 Beyond policies to regulate trade, encourage civilization of Native Americans, and manage the international border, the national state extended its influence into Indian country through resource exploration. Since the construction of the first western furnace, the Bourbon Iron Works on Slate Creek in Kentucky in 1791, local demand existed for veins of metal deposits. Within six years, workers solved initial production problems and offered multiple castings for sale.145 A new forge constructed nearby in 1799 helped meet rising regional demand for iron products.146 During the next ten years, iron furnaces and forges opened in at least four different sites in Ohio and a nailery began operations in Indiana. Seven additional combined furnaces and forges in Kentucky sold to merchant houses throughout the Ohio Valley.147 These foundries typically produced two to three tons of iron per day and fed an emergent ironworking cottage industry throughout the region, which produced stoves, ovens, kettles, cooking utensils, and flat-irons, with surplus iron sold to manufacturers in Pittsburgh.148 John Askin to John Anderson, November 4, 1795, Askin Papers, 1: 585. John Askin to Alexander Henry, April 30, 1804, Askin Papers, 2: 411. 144 Joseph Badger to William Hull, July 30, 1805, reel 1, LRSW-M, NARA. 145 Lowell H. Harrison, “John Breckinridge: Western Statesman,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 18 (May 1952), 142. 146 Arthur Cecil Bining, British Regulation of the Colonial Iron Industry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933), 95n55; James M. Swank, History of the Manufacture of Iron in All Ages, and Particularly in the United States from Colonial Times to 1891, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: American Iron and Steel Association, 1892), 283. 147 Swank, History of the Manufacture of Iron in All Ages, 285, 301–3, 314. 148 Ibid., 283, 301. 142 143

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The opening of territory cleared access to natural resources, facilitating a rapid expansion of regional iron manufacturing, which paralleled national trends. Two factors in particular coalesced to encourage domestic production. A rapid increase in the American population created a ready domestic market and disruptions of trans-Atlantic trade during the Napoleonic War limited the availability of cheaper European iron. Consequently, after 1800, iron exports declined precipitously despite elevated production. A protectionist lobby emerged and pressured Congress to increase duties on foreign iron to protect the American industry.149 The lobby failed in its effort to alter duties, but the war between Britain and France engendered conditions favorable to domestic manufacturers. Congressional failure to pass protectionist legislation does not suggest that mineral resources were unimportant to the national state. In response to parliamentary restrictions on copper exports from the British Isles two years earlier, Congress appropriated $1,500 for an agent to explore for copper mines and their viability along the southern shore of Lake Superior in 1800, appointing Richard Fenimore Cooper to lead the expedition.150 Political wrangling during the transition between the Adams and the Jefferson administrations aborted the excursion, but the idea of obtaining a more accurate depiction of mineral resources in the northern Lakes region remained alive. In 1810, work began anew to find a qualified “practical mineralist” and “not a theorist” to locate copper deposits in the upper peninsula of the Michigan Territory.151 As arms of federal authority, territorial governors and military officers served as the eyes and ears of the national state, gathering information on natural resources in the territories. Perhaps no official was as aggressive in identifying the natural history of the regional as Indiana territorial governor William Henry Harrison. He collected observations and hearsay from settlers, traders, and Native Americans to discover extractive resources that could enhance the territorial economy. Early in 1802, Harrison sent Secretary of War Henry Dearborn a sample of copper ore mined near the Vermillion River, about eighty miles from Vincennes. Intelligence gathered, he wrote, led him to believe “a considerable quantity [existed] at the place whence this piece was brought.”152 Local Indians understood the value of the location for U.S. officials and traders. For years they “cautioned” traders “not to approach the hills” where the Charles H. Evans, Exports, domestic and foreign from the American colonies to Great Britain from 1697 to 1789, inclusive: exports, domestic from the United States to all countries from 1789 to 1883, inclusive (Ayer Publishing, 1976; rpt. 1884), 36–7; John Bezís-Selfa, Forging America: Ironworkers, Adventurers, and the Industrious Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 23. 150 Section 9, Act of May 13, 1800, ch. 65, 2 Stat., 84; Russell M. Magnaghi, “Aborted Copper Expedition to Lake Superior Country, 1800,” Inland Seas, vol. 36 (Summer 1980), 82, 83. 151 Tench Coxe to William Henry Harrison, November 10, 1791, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 484–5. 152 William Henry Harrison to the Secretary of War, February 26, 1802, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 46. 149

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mine was located, leading Harrison to report that “Indians were extremely jealous of any search being made for this mine.” In 1809, Miami, Eel River, Potawatomi, and Delaware representatives succeeded in preventing Harrison from including the site in the Treaty of Fort Wayne only to have Kickapoo chiefs agree a few months later to sell the “rich copper mine” for an annuity of $400 and a one-time gift of $800 worth of goods.153 With far less intrusive methods, Michigan territorial governor William Hull reported in 1805 that “an abundance of Clay, suitable for bricks, in many places” existed near Detroit. Although inferior clay remained unexploited nearby at River Rouge, Hull believed the higher quality clay could be used throughout the city to construct fire resistant buildings in the aftermath of the devastating conflagration that had ripped through Detroit earlier that summer.154 From his post in Illinois, territorial governor Ninian Edwards also relayed information on mineral resources, including lead and salt.155 The actions of Harrison, Hull, Edwards, and others reveal a presumed marriage between private ­industry and the federal government.156 As exploratory agents, territorial officials and ­military commanders served as informants on the landscape, collecting intelligence, assessing economic potential, and shouldering the risk associated with resource acquisition in Indian country. As president, Thomas Jefferson exercised a policy of information gathering on several occasions. When he sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, he instructed them to note “the soil & face of the country, it’s [sic] growth & vegetable productions,” which indicated the potential agricultural capacity of the land, as well as “metals, limestone, pit coal, & saltpeter; salines & mineral waters,” which would benefit future extractive industries.157 Lewis and Clark diligently recorded their observations and sent letters to multiple federal officials painting a landscape portrait of potential mineral wealth.158 When ordered to discover the headwaters of the Mississippi River in 1805 and of the Arkansas and Red Rivers in 1806, Zebulon Pike likewise recorded landscape features and natural resources William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, December 10, 1809, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 396; A Treaty between the United States of America and the Kickapoo tribe of Indiana, December 9, 1809, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 397. 154 William Hull to Henry Dearborn, September 22, 1805, reel 1, LRSW-M, NARA. 155 William Wallace to Ninian Edwards, July 26, 1810, Ninian Edwards to William Eustis, N. Boilvin, February 2, 1811, and J. Meigs to Ninian Edwards, December 12, 1814, in E. B. Washburne, ed., The Edwards Papers: Being a Portion of the Collection of the Letters, Papers, and Manuscripts of Ninian Edwards (Chicago: Fergus Printing Company, 1884), 53, 62–3, 119. 156 Charles Jouett Report [1803], Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 758–60. 157 Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, June 20, 1803, in Donald Dean Jackson, Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with Related Documents, 1783–1854, vol. II, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 63. 158 William Clark to William Henry Harrison, April 2, 1805, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 119. 153

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including lead mines, coal deposits, iron ore, and salt.159 After the erection of Fort Madison in 1808, tens of thousands of dollars of lead mined and manufactured by Indian women from deposits near the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers funneled through the Indian agency there.160 The catalogue of information created by these men offered a glimpse at the potential commercial value of the territories. Over time, investors, miners, metalworkers, and merchants enjoyed the fruit of these national state endeavors. In contrast to the United States, Upper Canada did not experience the same spurt in foundry construction, despite strong interest in metal resources. During the 1790s, provincial authorities sent a small group of people to search Upper Canada for “Salt Springs and other Minerals.”161 The empire reserved for itself all gold and silver veins in its territories, making it important to discover those resources before they could be illicitly exploited by private individuals.162 Several expeditions revealed a number of deposits of iron ore in various parts of the province. Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe regularly appealed to the Duke of Portland during the 1790s to muster political support for iron production in the colony. The abundant potential of water power, which was “necessary for this manufacture,” would lower costs of production, he argued, and the construction of forges would reduce Upper Canadian dependency on iron from American manufactures.163 Portland filled his polite replies with cautious optimism, but was reluctant to encourage colonial industrial manufacturing, which would have competed with British domestic production.164 In 1750, Parliament Elliot Cous, ed., The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, vol. I (New York: Dover Publications, 1987), 293, 303, 511, 515, 516; William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803–1863 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979; rpt. 1959), 34–7. 160 Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, A Gathering of Rivers: Indians, Métis, and Mining in the Western Great Lakes, 1737–1832 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 81; Reuben Gold Thwaites, “Notes on Early Lead Mining in the Fever (or Galena) River Region,” in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, volume XIII (Madison: Democrat Printing Company, 1895), 280; Statement shewing the amount of estimated gain and loss on each of the United States’ Indian Factories now in operation, as more particularly shewn by the accounts referred to, from the 31st December, 1807, to the 30th September, 1811, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 784. 161 J. G. Simcoe to John King, October 31, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 165. 162 J. G. Simcoe to the Duke of Portland, December 21, 1794, Correspondence of LieutenantGovernor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 237. 163 J. G. Simcoe to the Duke of Portland, November 8, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 132; J. G. Simcoe to the Duke of Portland, December 21, 1794, and J. G. Simcoe to the Duke of Portland, January 22, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 237, 267; Duke of Portland to J. G. Simcoe, May 20, 1795, and Duke of Portland to J. G. Simcoe, March 3, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 13, 207; Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 108. 164 For a brief synthesis of these industrial developments, see Hilton, Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? 2–3. 159

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had passed an act prohibiting the development of new iron and steel mills as well as furnaces in the colonies. Turn-of-the-century legislation and expanding industrial manufacturing in the British Isles calcified that policy.165 Upper Canada was stuck importing iron from the United States, from areas as close as the Connecticut Reserve in Ohio. In an era before refrigerators, salt – more so than metals – was critical to the settlement and economy of Upper Canada and the United States because of its use as a preservative. Because so few people experienced in the manufacture of salt lived in the Upper Canada and the western states and territories, politicians and managers of salt works on both sides of the Lakes appealed to England to send knowledgeable instructors. When possible, Americans used their connections with Upper Canadian officials to help in their appeal.166 Since early colonial incursions into Kentucky, salt extraction paralleled settlement. After 1795, politicians and entrepreneurs looked to discover salt springs and licks in the territories, relying on the federal government to acquire them when necessary. The Treaty of Greenville secured salt springs in Ohio and a 1796 land law placed the Scioto salt spring and “every other” one discovered under federal control.167 As territorial governor, Arthur St. Clair had little interest in micromanaging production of salt. Indeed he viewed free and open access as beneficial to the region because it prevented the expenses of leases from being passed onto the consumers, an “injury” in his eye “that would fall unequally” upon settlers dependent upon that commodity.168 With access open to the public, the Scioto springs, the most productive saline reserves in the territory, became a home to a few hundred itinerant entrepreneurs, traders, and individuals who boiled brine.169 When Congress authorized statehood, it passed control of the springs to the Ohio legislature, which quickly brought the resource under tight regulation, ending the period of open access.170 The Ohio salt springs remained important to the region, but offered less salt than the sites along the Kanawha River in western Virginia. There, one salt maker produced about 150 pounds of salt each day, making it the second most valuable spring behind the one at

Bining, British Regulation of the Colonial Iron Industry, 55, 85–6, 120–1. J. G. Simcoe to John King, October 31, 1794, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 165; J. G. Simcoe to Charles Long, November 3, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 120. 167 Act of May 17, 1796, §3, ch. 27, 1 Stat., 466. 168 Remarks of Governor St. Clair before the Constitutional Convention, November, 1802, in William Henry Smith, ed., The St. Clair Papers: The Life and Public Service of Arthur St. Clair, vol. 2 (Cincinnati: Robert Clark, 1882), 595. 169 Eugene B. Willard, et al., eds., A Standard History of the Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio: An Authentic Narrative of the Past, with an Extended Survey of the Industrial and Commercial Development, vol. I (Lewis Publishing, 1916), 365. 170 Act of April 30, 1802, §7, ch. 40, 2 Stat., 175; Willard, History of Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio, 1: 373–3. 165 166

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Salina, New York.171 Not until 1810 did salt production along the Kanawha River contribute significantly to the regional economy.172 In Indiana, territorial governor William Henry Harrison took a different tack than St. Clair, whom he felt had mishandled the Scioto springs.173 Shortly after Christmas 1802, a body of influential government officials headed by Harrison petitioned Congress to alter its ordinances for governance of the new Indiana Territory. In addition to issues of land, schools, and the construction of roads, memorialists highlighted the significance of salt extraction. “[O]ne of the most indispensable articles of life (Salt) is very Scarse [sic] and difficult to be obtained” in the territory, they argued, “for the want of a sufficient number of Salt Springs.”174 Specifically they identified the salt springs at Saline, near Shawneetown just below the mouth of the Wabash River, as critical for settlers’ well-being. Remonstrancers asked that the spring fall to territorial control so it could be leased to manufacturers. While Harrison clearly embraced a different philosophy than St. Clair for the management of natural resources, he also faced a unique problem. Earlier that year, Little Turtle, along with Miami, Eel River, Wea, and Piankshaw leaders who subscribed to greater accommodation, attempted to lease the salt springs at Saline to either the federal government or private investors. Harrison and his cohort worried that their commercial management of the springs might strengthen Indian land claims, which was a “present advantage of the Indians,” and prevent the territorial elite from gaining control of the resource. They argued that the Jefferson administration needed to move quickly to preserve the surrounding timber needed to boil the brine, otherwise enterprising individuals would ruin the financial potential. By September 1802, Little Turtle, Jean Baptiste Richardville (Miami), Topinbee and Winamek (both Potawatomi), along with chiefs of the Kickapoo, Eel River, Kaskaskia, Wea, and Piankshaw offered to negotiate terms to grant the United States “the privilege” of making salt “for ever” on the Saline River. Harrison remained undeterred, deciding to convince members of the Shawnee and Delaware, whom even he acknowledged had no claim to the saliferous territory, to cede the land, which they did.175 Jefferson used that cession to pressure the more legitimate Indian proprietors at the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1803, not only for rights to the salt Garnett Laidlaw Eskew, Salt, the Fifth Element: The Story of a Basic American Industry (Chicago: J. G. Ferguson, 1948), 76, 79. 172 John E. Stealey III, The Antebellum Kanawha Salt Business and Western Markets (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 15–6. 173 Willard, History of Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio, 372. 174 Petition of the Vincennes Convention, December 28, 1802, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 65. 175 Harrison to the Secretary of War, March 25, 1802, Minutes of Indian Conference, September 17, 1802, and Petition of the Vincennes Convention, December 28, 1802, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 47, 56–7, 65. 171

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springs, but also to a large land cession. To demonstrate American benevolence and gratitude, the United States promised to deliver up to 150 bushels of salt annually to the signing parties.176 Federal oversight of the salt springs continued through the territorial period with Harrison “superintending the affairs of the Saline.”177 Harrison appointed local businessman Isaac White superintendent of the salt works and production began in 1805.178 Within months, residents advocated that the territory fund construction of a wagon road to improve transportation to and from the salt works and authorize a ferry to facilitate commerce to Kentucky.179 After two years of production, salt remained scarce in the region, but as the territorial governor observed, “the progress in population of the Country” and a “­prodigious increase of pork and beef for exportation” contributed to high demand. People arrived from as far as 250 miles away to load packhorses and boats with salt. With demand outstripping production, some individuals waited “for many weeks seeing no prospect of obtaining their loads,” leading some daring individuals to produce their own illegally at the edges of springs.180 River traffic became so important to the facilities by 1807 that Harrison planned on constructing a log-lock system similar to the one used on the James River. Five years after the Saline Works opened, nearly two thousand men worked there.181 When animosities between Native Americans and settlers began to amplify in 1807, Harrison made the security of the salt works, as well as the road popularly dubbed the Salt Route, a priority to secure production.182 Upper Canadians too craved salt resources. After relinquishing their posts south of the Great Lakes to the United States in 1796, Canadian inhabitants lost access to important salt springs, most notably the salt works at Salina, New York.183 Upper Canada had a number of quality springs, such as the salt works at Louth, in operation since 1793. Initial production remained small, but after construction of new facilities in 1795, workers processed just over thirty bushels a month for the first seven months, amounting to 452 1/4 Thomas Jefferson to the House of Representatives, January 18, 1803, and Article 4, Articles of a Treaty made at Fort Wayne, June 7, 1803, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 683, 688. 177 William Henry Harrison to Albert Gallatin, August 30, 1809, box 1, folder 15, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, IHS. 178 George Fauntleroy White, “Memoir of Colonel Isaac White of Knox County, Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History, vol. 15 (Dec. 1919), 332; Act of March 3, 1803, ch. 28, 2 Stat., 235. 179 Petition of residents four miles below Clarksville on the north bank of the Ohio River to William Henry Harrison for a wagon road, May 16, 1806, William H. English Family Papers, IHS. 180 William Henry Harrison to Albert Gallatin, December 26, 1807, series II, William Henry Harrison Papers, LL. 181 Eskew, Salt, the Fifth Element, 99. 182 William Henry Harrison to William Hargrove, September 12, 1807, and William Henry Harrison to William Hargrove, September 27, 1807, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 252, 260. 183 Memorandum, n.d., Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 3: 108. 176

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bushels sold for £360 in New York currency.184 Surveyors uncovered other sites, including a large salt spring near the mouth of the Grand River, which feeds into Lake Erie from the north.185 Despite the presence of these springs, Upper Canada did not produce enough salt to meet demand. For decades after the War of 1812, Upper Canada imported large quantities of salt from American territories.186 If Upper Canadian and American interests in metal and mineral interests in Indian country served as one plane of a wedge in Indian country, then white settler pressures on game populations in the Ohio Valley was another. After the Treaty of Greenville, the American population in the Ohio Valley ballooned. Newly opened lands attracted emigrants from the East. Log cabins and freshly cleared fields increasingly pocked the region’s deciduous forests. Towns sprung up along roads and navigable rivers. By the first years of the nineteenth century, villages and towns near the Indian boundary grew more dense. The proximity of settlers and Native Americans produced a competition for resources similar to that which had exacerbated, if not caused, the last war. For the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, and others living closest to American settlements, competition for fur-bearing animals became a pressing issue. The Treaty of Greenville established a porous border between Indian country and the United States. While Native Americans retained the right to “hunt within the territory and lands” which they ceded “without hindrance or molestation, so long as they demean themselves peaceably,” settlers, surveyors, and traders needed to obtain permission from federal authorities before crossing the line.187 Most settlers respected the Treaty of Greenville boundary, or at least had no reason to violate it, but even small numbers of illegal settlers, traders, and surveyors could disrupt Indian relations. In July 1798, Zachariah Cox along with thirty-two compatriots initiated a controversial settlement called Smithland on unceded land near the mouth of the Cumberland River. Many of these illegal settlers and squatters, like their Kentucky predecessors during the 1780s, avowed their preemptive right to the land and despised governmentsupported efforts to remove them. The Smithland settlers asserted rights to claim land, to hunt without interference or threat from Indians, and to free Angus MacDonell to J. G. Simcoe, March 10, 1796, and Return of Salt Made at his Majesty’s Salt Springs in the Township of Louth, Since They Have Been Yielded up to the Government in the Month of July, 1793, March 10, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 214–15, 215. 185 River Ouse. Peter Russell to J. G. Simcoe, July 9, 1795, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 38–9. 186 Thomas Clark to E. B. Littlehales, June 18, 1796, Correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 4: 306; Thomas Clark to James Green, September 15, 1797, The Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 282; John Howison, Sketches of upper Canada, domestic, local, and characteristic: to which are added, practical details for the information of emigrants of every class; and some recollections of the United States of America (Oliver and Boyd, 1821), 133. 187 Article 7, Treaty of Greenville, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 563. 184

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navigation of the rivers.188 Some preached “hostile intentions” toward the territorial government.189 The Smithland settlement exposed limits of federal authority along the Indian country bordered land, prompting government officials throughout the country to worry about the “Set of men” that Ohio territorial governor Winthrop Sargent once characterized as “but little advanced from a State of Nature and owing no Subjection to this Government.”190 Territorial governments worked hard to reign in these “trespassers.”191 At times, culprits were new emigrants whose naïve understanding of the permeable boundary led seasoned American settlers to christen them “Indian bait.”192 Whether ornery or ignorant, trespassers conveyed a message to Native American communities that the federal government either would not or could not enforce its treaty obligations.193 From his territorial offices, William Henry Harrison received complaints from Delaware chiefs and others in 1801 saying that settlers – especially from Kentucky – regularly passed onto their lands to hunt. With the loss of so much land due to the Treaty of Greenville, hunting grounds in the region were scarce, and southern Indiana became precious for many nations, including Shawnee, Kickapoo, and Winnebago Indians.194 When settlers hunted in violation of the Greenville treaty, they depleted game populations upon which Native American villages relied. Reports suggested that deer, bear, and especially buffalo populations declined in the middle Ohio Valley and perhaps also north into the western Great Lakes.195 By 1805, intelligence indicated that game had become scarce as far west as St. Louis.196 Paired with slumping fur prices, reduced numbers of fur-bearing animals stressed the Native American economy. For the Jefferson administration, such animal scarcity was good news. The Northwest could not last as two competing economies; it needed to support one economy and see the other removed or eliminated. No one took responsibility for the transgressing settlers. In Indiana, Harrison, like many other officials, tied his own hands, situating himself as constrained by federal policy and the ambiguities of the Indian boundary. He acknowledged that the “practice” of illegal hunting in Indian country had Stuart’s Kentucky Herald, October 30, 1798, 2; Arthur St. Clair to James Wilkinson, July 16, 1798, St. Clair Papers, 2: 427. For more on Zachariah Cox, see Isaac Joslin Cox, ed., “Documents Relating to Zachariah Cox,” Quarterly Publication of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, vol. 8 (April–June, July–September 1913), 31–112. 189 Rufus Putnam to the Secretary of the Treasury [Oliver Wolcott], October 30, 1798, TPUS, 2: 654. 190 Winthrop Sargent to Lieut. Prior, October 25, 1792, TPUS, 3: 386. 191 Governor St. Clair to the Secretary of State, n.d., 1796, St. Clair Papers, 2: 402. 192 Samuel Hopkins to Samuel G. Hopkins, July 18, 1802, Samuel Hopkins Papers, KHS. 193 See for instance, Oliver Wolcott to Rufus Putnam, September 24, 1798, Rufus Putnam Papers, Marietta College Collection, OHS. 194 “French Lick and West Baden,” folder 4, Jacob Piatt Dunn Collection, ISL. 195 William Henry Harrison to the Secretary of War, July 15, 1801, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 27; May 29, 1797, Thomas Duggan Journal (1705–1801), WLC. 196 J. Bruff [?] to James Wilkinson, March 19, 1805, reel 2, LRSW-M, NARA. 188

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“grown into a monstrous abuse,” but sighed that until a boundary line could be completely surveyed, it would be “impossible to tell when encroachments are made.”197 Even the territorial legislature of Ohio admitted to a “spirit too prevalent among a certain class of the inhabitants of the Territory to invade the rights of our Indian neighbors.”198 Trespassing became so commonplace that a number of Shawnee and Delaware leaders who initially opposed the federal survey of the boundary changed their position, calling for its completion in 1799.199 Still unsatisfied with territorial and state leadership in Indiana and Ohio, a delegation of Shawnee and Delaware chiefs journeyed to the capital in Philadelphia “to complain loudly of the white people hunting and killing game on their lands and of having their horses stolen by white people.”200 In response, Secretary of War Dearborn ordered Harrison to do what he could to prevent such violations of the treaty but provided no additional resources to secure the boundary. Energetic Indian leaders looking for peaceful solutions could find themselves stymied by a federal system that underwent several revisions from 1794 to 1810. After Fallen Timbers, Anthony Wayne served as the spokesman of the federal government. Northwest territorial governor Arthur St. Clair, perhaps the most significant federal ambassador to Native American communities prior to Wayne’s military campaign, resumed his position as primary voice of the national state after the military demobilized following the Treaty of Greenville. Yet the federal structure blurred his authority, especially when members of the War Department engaged in direct communications with Indian leaders. Poor interdepartmental communication only magnified problems.201 William Henry Harrison succeeded St. Clair as the highest federal official for Indian affairs in the region when he became territorial governor of Indiana in 1800 and as Ohio moved closer to statehood.202 This shift muddied authority by not only clouding the question of who better represented the voice of the federal government, but also instituting arbitrary zones of jurisdiction: state and territorial (federal) boundaries. Moreover, federal authority superseded Ohio state authority in areas of the state not yet ceded by Native Americans. The creation and William Henry Harrison to the Secretary of War, July 15, 1801, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 26–7. 198 Answer of the House of Representatives, n.d. [November 1800], St. Clair Papers, 2: 513. 199 Rufus Putnam to Oliver Wolcott, March 15, 1799, TPUS, 2: 18. The letter is available in box 1 of the Native American Collection at the WLC. 200 Henry Dearborn to William Henry Harrison, February 23, 1802, reel 1, LSSW-IA, NARA. 201 Lisa Ford delves into efforts by Georgia and national-state agents to extend jurisdiction over indigenous people, though she contends these efforts largely failed prior to the War of 1812. Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Arthur St. Clair to George Washington, n.d., 1795, St. Clair Papers, 2: 390–1. 202 Arthur St. Clair to Samuel Dexter, November 29, 1800, folder 3, box 30, series 5, William H. English Family Papers, IHS; Extract of a letter from James McHenry to Major General Hamilton, April 30, 1799, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 645. 197

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appointments of territorial governors for the Illinois, Louisiana, and Michigan territories added elaboration to an already variegated government structure. Kickapoo grievers became tangled in bureaucratic authority in 1810 when they appealed to the acting governor of Upper Louisiana to help them recover property stolen from them by settlers, only to discover that their complaints were more appropriately directed to Ninian Edwards, territorial governor of Illinois, on the other side of the Mississippi River.203 Confusion often began at the local level. It was “too much a practice with the commandants of garrisons on the frontiers, to hold talks with Indian tribes, and play parts which belong exclusively to the civil officers employed to superintend the Indian affairs.” Consequently, Indians often mistakenly sought help where none could be obtained.204 During the next several years, Indian agents and factors, in addition to fort commandants, each with specific delegated institutional powers and arbitrary districts, added to a growing bureaucratic network.205 While the federal system seemed rational and organized to its administrators, to Native Americans wrestling the bureaucratic hydra, it could appear unwieldy and arcane. Some Indians expressed that they were “at a loss to know with whom they are to Council” and found it difficult to “obtain satisfaction to any complaints [that] they have to make.”206 Even Indian agents stewed in frustration when Indians, traders, or mischievous settlers passed out of their jurisdiction, leaving them few immediate options than to write a letter to another official.207 Wholly unsatisfied with federal, territorial, and state initiative, as well as settler behavior, Kickapoo in the Illinois country took matters into their own hands, removing unwanted residents in 1805. Their hunters used low-intensity, controlled burns to drive deer during the autumn hunting season, a common and effective practice among the region’s tribes. Settlers accused the hunters of destroying their property, especially fences and haystacks.208 Kickapoo hunters claimed they had a right to use fire granted to them not only by the Master of Life but also as a condition of the fur trade. “Why do you reproach us of setting fire?” asked Oulaqua, a Kickapoo chief. “You are glad to receive our skins,” and without fire “we would have none.” Besides, Oulaqua pointed out, whites in the region also used fire to hunt. In an artful dodge of responsibility, Oulaqua argued that Kickapoo hunters tried avoid American settlements but could not be responsible for monitoring every new homestead. “The whites arrive every day, they settle, we know nothing of it,” he opined. “If they Frederick Bates to Ninian Edwards, August 2, 1810, Edwards Papers, 54. Extract of a letter from James McHenry to Major General Hamilton, May 21, 1799, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 645–6. 205 Henry Dearborn to Charles Jouett, October 26, 1805, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA. 206 Whitmore Knaggs to Arthur St. Clair, June 8, 1800, Northwest Territory Collection, WLC. 207 Charles Jouett to James Wilkinson, November 30, 1809, reel 24, LRSW-M, NARA. 208 William Henry Harrison to Secretary of War, December 24, 1805, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 180. 203 204

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suffer in the fall, it is rather their fault than ours, because we do not know where they are.”209 Despite Oulaqua’s claim, Kickapoo hunters likely knew the locations of new settlements, perhaps even better than Harrison and other federal officials. Itinerant hunters, surveillance parties, and passing traders all carried information of American settler activity. Kickapoo hunters probably used the fire strategically, destroying property while invoking their hunting rights. Other hunters took a more direct approach by killing settler livestock. Harrison pointed to “difficulties” created by Piankshaw, Wea, and Eel River men in the vicinity of Vincennes who broke into settlers’ homes, slaughtered hogs and cattle, razed fencing, and stole horses.210 Native American acrimony came in response to an expanding federal presence in the trans-Appalachian West, as well as extensive settlement in ceded lands. Since the Treaty of Greenville, the national state had striven to bring federal authority to Indian country through a number of institutions with mixed results. Perhaps the greatest success of the federal government was in its exploration and intelligence gathering of natural resources, setting the stage for future commercial growth of the region. Yet the federal government fell short of its most pressing agenda: to achieve greater influence over Indian communities. Market conditions and structural shortcomings in the Indian agency and factory system undermined federal efforts to obtain a greater share of the fur trade and few Indians demonstrated willingness to reform their agricultural strategies. While some villages entered into business with factories, such as at Detroit and Fort Wayne, villages and chiefs outside of these spheres continued to hold ambivalent or outright hostile attitudes toward the United States. Limitations in the ability and willingness of military and territorial officials to regulate white settlers and traders exacerbated these tensions even as federal regulation of the bordered land proved more effective than it had been during the previous decade, if inconsistently applied. As the first decade of the nineteenth century progressed, Native Americans continued their struggle to maintain autonomy even as the governments to the north and south worked to erode that independence. U.S. and Upper Canadian moves to secure mineral resources, develop infrastructure, and alter The Answer of Pawatamo, Chasso and Oulaqua, the Speech Pronounced by the Latter, December 16, 1805, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 178–9. 210 Susan Abram argues that a declining cultural value placed on the fur trade for eighteenth-century Cherokee contributed to a greater emphasis placed on warfare as a vehicle for demonstrating masculinity. It is not unreasonable to consider that similar trends vexed Indians north of the Ohio River. Susan Abram, “Real Men: Masculinity, Spirituality, and Community in Late-EighteenthCentury Cherokee Warfare,” in Thomas A. Foster, ed., New Men: Manliness in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 75; Harrison to the Secretary of War, July 15, 1801, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 27–8; Jonathan Cass to James Wilkinson, March 17, 1796, folder 2, Memorial of John Hamilton to Arthur St. Clair, July 22, 1798, and Arthur St. Clair to Samuel Dexter, November 29, 1800, folder 3, and Henry Dearborn to William Henry Harrison, November 24, 1803, folder 4, box 30, series 5, William H. English Family Papers, IHS; Harrison to the Secretary of War, May 23, 1807, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 217. 209

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their participation in the fur trade sometimes meshed but more often clashed with a fluid political economy in Indian country. By 1807, pressures on Indian communities in the Ohio Valley and southern Lakes region intensified substantially enough to prompt a resurgence of martial rhetoric and a low-intensity property war.

6 Partnerships

After the conclusion of the Greenville Treaty in 1795, western settlers ­advocating for access to quality lands found little support in the nation’s capital. Energy to transform American policy in the West stirred anew as war between Britain and France spilled across Europe and into the broader Atlantic world. U.S. efforts to remain neutral brought new strategic value to the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys as officials attempted to preserve and augment American commerce during the first decade of the nineteenth century. Threads of national-state authority and economic security merged with western expansionist impulses. The marriage of local and national interests transformed visions of expansionism from a process that destabilized the frontier to one that promised strength as American settlements engendered improved national security against foreign and Indian encroachments. Subsequent land treaties, which augured stability for American policymakers, destabilized Indian country as the arrangements stitched together by communities in the aftermath of the Greenville treaty fell apart. In the debates over the treaties, Shawnee brothers Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh emerged as leaders dedicated to forging a meaningful pan-ethnic movement in opposition to American expansionism. Paired with aggressive British and French policies toward the United States, their efforts challenged both local white aspirations and national-state designs. Perceiving a crisis in national-state authority, President Madison and members of Congress pursued a belligerent path to secure a commercial future and American sovereignty within an Atlantic community. Western thirst for land appeared unquenchable. By 1810, the population of Ohio had grown to 230,760, with 406,511 living in Kentucky (80,561 enslaved), and 24,520 in Indiana Territory. In Indiana, white settlers looked to propel the territory toward statehood by encouraging rapid settlement, following the model of Ohio after the Greenville Treaty. Unlike the integral territory of Ohio, which neared statehood in the autumn of 1802, three distinct strips of 213

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land comprised Indiana: one bordering western Ohio; the Vincennes tract; and Clark’s grant just north of Louisville. In December, remonstrancers to Congress argued that “the quantity of lands in the Territory open for Settlement is by no means sufficiently large to admit of a population adequate to the purposes of Civil Government.” They implored Congress to authorize the purchase of lands “as an incouragement [sic] for a speedy population of the Country.”1 Westerners held little immediate interest in settling all the land; rather they wanted access to the “finest . . . soil in the world,” arable bottomlands that could serve as a basis for commercial agriculture. William Henry Harrison embraced this reasoning and used his position as agent for the federal government to add weight to memorials. “Without such further purchase,” Harrison wrote to the secretary of war, “Indiana cannot for many years become a member of the Union and I am heartily tired of living in a Territory.”2 Arguments for expansionism were well-timed as the national government became more concerned about its authority in and security of the West. In the autumn of 1802, Spain receded Louisiana to France. To Spanish officials, the colony was expensive to administer, and a diplomatic headache as both Osage Indians and American settlers challenged their authority in the Mississippi Valley. In an unsuccessful ploy to shape wartime politics in Europe in 1800, the emperor traded the territory to France. The move rattled the Jefferson administration.3 French control of New Orleans threatened to disrupt Ohio Valley exports passing through that port, which had been increasing since the Pinckney Treaty in 1795. Loss of that outlet threatened the republic by potentially rekindling centrifugal forces only recently doused in the West. With a potential “crisis” of union in mind, Thomas Jefferson instructed Indiana territorial governor William Henry Harrison to seek a land cession along the lower Ohio Valley. “Whatever can now be obtained, must be obtained quickly,” he implored, encouraging Harrison to proceed before French interference might stymie the council.4 Control of the lower Ohio Valley would provide the United States an opportunity to monitor and  – ideally  – forestall potential waves of foreigners moving into the region. Although British traders in the Mississippi Valley concerned the administration, the prospect of French intrigue disrupting commerce and regional stability threatened to alter the tone of foreign relations with that country. The Kaskaskia, who lived along the Mississippi River south of St. Louis, possessed the territory most strategically positioned to suit American Petition of the Vincennes Convention, December 28, 1802, in Logan Esarey, ed., Governors Messages and Letters: Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison, vol. I (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Commission, 1922), 63. 2 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, December 24, 1810, Messages and Letters, 1: 498. 3 David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 290; Gilbert C. Din and A. P. Nasatir, The Imperial Osages: Spanish-Indian Diplomacy in the Mississippi Valley (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983), passim. 4 Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, February 27, 1803, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 73. 1

Map 3.  The West in 1810.

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interests. American settlement and the proliferation of ­national-state institutions from the Wabash River to the mouth of the Ohio River would serve as a buffer against foreign encroachments. During the summer of 1803, Harrison exploited the impoverished position of the Kaskaskia, particularly the declining fortunes of principal chief Jean Baptiste Ducoigne, to whom he offered $1,000 in annuities in return for the lands of present-day southern Illinois.5 Ducoigne approved the treaty in August 1803 and expressed an “inclination to live like a white man,” which elicited “the hatred of all the other chiefs.”6 Political fallout in Indian country mattered little to the federal government. By the end of the summer the geopolitics of the region altered substantially. Rather than use Louisiana against the United States, Napoleon surprised American officials when he offered the colony for sale. Jefferson jumped at the chance not only to expand American territory but also to guarantee access to the Mississippi River and New Orleans for Ohio Valley commerce. In July 1803, the administration announced the purchase and began wrestling with the consequences for western policy. Establishing U.S. hegemony in the region would not be easy. Already British traders from Montreal, in addition to those of French and Spanish colonial legacies, operated along the Missouri River.7 By the end of the year, droves of federal administrators arrived in Louisiana and began the process of organizing the political, legal, commercial, and military institutions to govern Indians, foreign residents and traders, and recent American arrivals.8 Land acquisition continued apace to secure Ohio Valley commerce while bridging distant settler territories with new purchases. During the summer of 1804, under direction from Jefferson’s administration, William Henry Harrison entered into three major Indian treaties that wove national and local interests by promoting settlement as national security.9 Treaties with the Delaware and Piankshaw connected the Vincennes and Clark grants in southern Indiana with lands gained by the 1803 Kaskaskia treaty, resulting in uninterrupted American claims along the northern edge of the Ohio River from the Clark grant to the Mississippi.10 The third treaty, this one with the Sauk and Fox in November, brought into the American dominion lands from the Illinois and Fox Rivers in the east to the Mississippi and lower Wisconsin rivers on the western boundary.11 American forts and settlements in this region would afford opportunities 7 Stat., 78–9. Harrison to the Secretary of War, n.d. 1804, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 115. 7 James Wilkinson to James Madison, August 24, 1805, reel 2, LRSW-U, NARA. 8 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, July 5, 1809, reel 23, LRSW-M, NARA; Peter J. Kastor, The Nation’s Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 93. 9 Robert M. Owens, Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 76. 10 7 Stat., 81–4. 11 Ibid., 84–7. 5 6

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to monitor Canadian traders entering Louisiana Territory via the upper Great Lakes and regulate river traffic and Indian trade along most of the Mississippi River. Harrison viewed the Louisiana Purchase and Indian treaties as together initiating “an important epoch in the history of our country,” which led him to be “no longer apprehensive of waging an eternal war with the numerous and warlike tribes of aborigines.”12 Others in Indiana’s government concurred that it was “highly important” and suggested these developments might improve prospects for statehood.13 Subsequent treaties obtained during the following year shifted the focus from the western borderland to the bordered land with Canada. The Treaty of Fort Industry, negotiated by Charles Jouett in July, fulfilled the federal government’s promise to Connecticut to deliver lands on its Ohio claims. Conveniently, it also moved the Indian boundary away from the nascent shipbuilding center at Erie, Pennsylvania.14 The August Treaty of Grouseland extended settler territory further into Indiana, fully consolidating possession of the northern banks of the Ohio River. The cessions extended territory in eastern Indiana to the north along a strip adjacent to Ohio as far as Fort Wayne, the site of the former Miami Villages. The Treaty of Vincennes in December with the Piankshaw extracted a further cession of land in southern Illinois, linking the northwest corner of the Vincennes tract with the Kaskaskia cession two years prior.15 Taken together, these treaties promised settlement along corridors of trade that tied Indian communities to Canada while also capturing fertile river valleys desired by westerners. The rapid series of treaties resonated through Indian country and brought into relief divergent paths taken by communities there following 1795. The recent treaties tended to benefit chiefs and villages who received annuities and gifts for their tribes. Whether they sought funds for accomodationist purposes, as did Black Hoof at Wapakoneta, or to maintain power within their nation, like Little Turtle, these individuals effectively used their relationships with Indian agents as well as patronage within their communities to administer federal money and other resources flowing into Indian country.16 Indians and settlers alike recognized the reciprocity between federal agents and men seemingly “made chiefs” by American fiat.17 Often, the uneven distribution of annuities Harrison’s Address to the General Assembly, July 29, 1805, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 153. 13 House of Representatives to the Governor, July 30, 1805, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 159. 14 7 Stat., 91–3. 15 Ibid., 100–1. 16 Reginald Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783–1812 (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967), 143. 17 John Badollet to Albert Gallatin, September 25, 1810, in Gayle Thornbrough, ed., The Correspondence of John Badollet and Albert Gallatin, 1804–1836 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1963), 168; William Henry Harrison to Henry Dearborn, March 3, 1803, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 76. 12

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inspired resentment in communities that experienced few if any benefits from them. For chiefs who embraced tribal proprietary rights to land rather than the concept of “common rights,” these treaties reified their arguments for ownership. During the Treaty of Greenville, Little Turtle had tried to advance Miami territorial sovereignty at the expense of other nations. The principle that Indian lands were held “in common” had won the day as the strategy to prevent continued American encroachment. Anthony Wayne had endorsed common lands to avoid conflicts that might have prevented its acceptance among the delegations. Not until William Henry Harrison arrived in the West did Little Turtle and Black Hoof, both advocates for proprietary rights, find an eager federal partner who shared their perspective. Despite having served as aid-de-camp to Wayne at Greenville, Harrison championed the idea that Indians held distinct lands, “laid off separately” from other tribes. He used expedient and selective readings of documents and interviews with settlers, traders, and Indians to determine which leaders to invite to each treaty. This procedure bypassed traditional consensusstyle decision making, while also excluding, without appeal, communities who might challenge cessions by asserting their own claims.18 His rendering of territorial claims remained incomplete but nevertheless met the political ends of the national government, white settlers, and particular Indian leaders. With each treaty’s passing, intergenerational relationships between Indian men gradually eroded. Many signatories were older men for whom activities like hunting and warfare held diminished importance. For them, land could be deployed as a negotiating tool to preserve peace as well as status. For their younger counterparts, land cessions circumscribed their ability to construct masculine identities and build their social standing through hunting and sparring with rivals. As protests against the treaties amplified in Indian country, young Indian men injected gendered arguments, celebrating their warrior manhood and rebuking older men who put them and their communities at risk.19 Chiefs and federal officials, they argued “intended making women of the Indians.” Only by resisting the United States’ expansionism, these men reasoned, “they could be respected by the President as men.”20 Henry Dearborn to the Shawanee [sic] Nation, February 19, 1807, and Henry Dearborn to William Wells, October 26, 1804, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA; William Henry Harrison to Henry Dearborn, March 3, 1803, William Henry Harrison to Henry Dearborn, August, 26, 1805, and William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, July 4, 1810, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 76–84, 162–3, 440; William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, November 3, 1809, box 1, folder 15, William Henry Harrison Papers, IHS. 19 Speech of Chief Five Medals, May 12, 1812, in Gayle Thornbrough, ed., The Letter Book of the Indian Agency at Fort Wayne, 1809–1815 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1961), 121; A Memorandum of a Council held at Saguina on the fifth of June 1807, reel 8, LRSW-M, NARA; Tecumseh Speech to Governor Harrison, August 20, 1810, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 465. 20 William Wells to Henry Dearborn, April 20, 1808, reel 33, LRSW-M, NARA; Indian Council at Amherstburg, June 8, 1805, MPHC, 23: 41. 18

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Defiant of an aging leadership who signed away land and their livelihood, dissenting warriors asserted their continuing rights by targeting white property in areas that had been ceded in the treaties from 1803 to 1805. Residents there noted a surge in Indian thefts and destruction of livestock as well as other property.21 William Bruce, a settler living near the edge of the Vincennes tract, recalled that even though there were “quite a number of red skins, hunting and travelling through all parts of the country – the Delawares, Miamees [sic], Shawnees, Potewatomies [sic], etc.” – they were “entirely friendly” until after the cessions.22 As during the wars of the 1780s and 1790s, warriors viewed commercial and emigrant river traffic as practical and symbolic targets to dissuade settlement.23 After a particularly rough summer in 1811, Illinois governor Ninian Edwards labelled the persistent violence a “partial war.”24 In contrast to these other areas, John Badollet, registrar of the land office in Vincennes, observed, in the eastern part of the cessions annexed to the Cincinnati district where the Treaty of Greenville line was under less stress from settlement, new emigrants appeared far less concerned about Indian incursions than in much of southern Indiana, where “repeated pictures of threatened depredations” kept people fearful.25 A selective pattern of violence suggests that Indians accepted an American settler presence and continued to respect the Treaty of Greenville cession as legitimate, but possessed deep resentments about those made after 1803. Far from a beginning, this turn marked a shifting geography of violence in Indian country. Although the Treaty of Greenville brought peace to the Ohio country and most of Kentucky, war continued in the middle Mississippi Valley. Through the end of the eighteenth century, Osage communities propitiously fought to retain their autonomy and control of the region’s resources and trade. In addition to Spanish efforts to subjugate them, the Osage faced invasions of eastern Native American populations attempting to distance themselves from American settlers. Refugee Indians petitioned the Spanish government for lands during the 1780s and 1790s. The empire granted the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, and others the right to establish villages in the Ste. Geneviève district. In response, Osage warriors launched expeditions against the new settlements. Eager to protect its northern border from the Osage, Americans, and British alike, Spanish colonial officials facilitated alliances with Indians in the middle and upper Mississippi Valley, creating layers of protection for the new See for instance, William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, August 1 and 6, 1810, and July 2, 1811, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 453, 458, 527; Clark to William Eustis, November 23, 1811, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 802. 22 “Memoirs of the Bruce Family, August 6, 1851, written by William Bruce – Aged 75 years,” William Bruce Memoirs, ISL. 23 William Henry Harrison to William Hargrove, July 6, 1807, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 221–2. 24 Ninian Edwards to William Eustis, August 11, 1811, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 801. 25 John Badollet to Albert Gallatin, October 26, 1811, Correspondence of John Badollet, 201. 21

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settlements. Spanish traders provided material support to Sauk, Fox, Iowa, and Potawatomi warriors to expand their own hunting territories into the Missouri Valley. Osage warriors replied to these attacks, precipitating a pattern of systemic war as coalitions against the Osage waxed and waned through the 1790s.26 If scholars correctly characterize these tribes as “ancient enemies” of the Osage, then the constellation of demographic and economic pressures after the 1780s amplified the historic conflict. Continuity and disjuncture accompanied the transfer of Louisiana to the United States. Sauk, Fox, Potawatomi, and Kickapoo men continued raids across the Mississippi River, as did members of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, while Osage warriors retaliated, striking villages east of the Mississippi River, though to less effect.27 The insertion of federal institutions added a new dynamic to the conflict. Prior to 1803, white Americans rarely found themselves targets in the war. But as agents of the national state asserted their authority in the region, Osage men likewise targeted American settlers and traders.28 To create a peaceable environment for white settlement and to gain some influence over the Osage, federal officials worked to prevent further refugee Indian emigration across the Mississippi until it could determine Indian claims there and organize a territorial government. After several aborted efforts, James Wilkinson and William Henry Harrison succeeded in gaining an agreement in 1806 to end the hostilities between the Delaware, Miami, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Sauk, Fox, Kaskaskia, Des Moines River Sioux, Iowa, and Great and Little Osage nations.29 The treaty brought only temporary relief and white settlers blamed the Osage for a rising number of assaults on newly arrived white settlers. Frustrated by continuing Indian expeditions and a perceived danger to commerce in the West, the United States lifted its treaty-based protection of the Osage in July 1808. Meriwether Lewis, governor of Louisiana Territory, invited the region’s Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo, Sauk, Sioux, and others to go to war, offering enlarged territories to those who participated. The partnership gave the United States a chance to flex its authority without committing a substantial military presence to the region. Eager to punish the Osage, the territorial governor advised the warriors to launch their offensive only “with a Din and Nasatir, Imperial Osage, 192, 198, 200, 222, 271, 304. R. David Edmunds, Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 154; Din and Nasatir, Imperial Osage, 222; Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, January 16, 1806, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 185. 28 William Henry Harrison to Henry Dearborn, March 3, 1803, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 84. 29 A Treaty between the Tribes of Indians Called the Delawares, Miamis, Potawatimes, Kickapoos, Sacks, Foxes, Kaskaskias, Scioux of the River Demoin & Iowas of the one part and the Great and Little Osages of the other part, October 18, 1806, reel 2, and Meriwether Lewis to William Henry Harrison (newspaper clipping), July 26, 1808, reel 3, LRSW-U, NARA. 26 27

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sufficient force to destroy or drive them from our neighborhood.”30 By the end of November 1808, chiefs of the Great and Little Osage signed a treaty bringing them back under the “protection” of the United States and that included a land cession amounting to nearly all of present-day Missouri.31 When the wars continued and the United States failed to uphold its promised protections, the Osage came to understand the limits of federal authority in the region. The United States kept the land.32 Although Lewis did not deploy a language of confederacy as he drummed up opposition to the Osage, he certainly suggested that the United States endorsed the creation of one. Since the Treaty of Greenville, American and British officials had spurned Indian confederacies, which they perceived as threats to national-state and imperial authority. With a zeal that matched his Washington counterparts’, the Duke of Portland instructed Peter Russell, the acting lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, in 1797 to take “every possible means of preventing connections or confederations from taking place between the several Nations.” His unambiguous directive added that “keeping them as separate and distinct as possible from each other” should be “a system” from which he should never depart.33 As recently as 1805 in the United States, after receiving reports of a potential “combination of Indian nations” against the Osage, Secretary of War Henry Dearborn ordered Indian agents in the Southwest and Northwest to “use every prudent measure . . . to prevent” such a confederation.34 Dearborn understandably knew that such a confederacy could not only dismantle U.S. efforts to broker a peace at that time, it also could turn against the federal government, particularly considering the enmity expressed by many Indians in the wake of the treaties. Indeed, reports circulated during the summer of 1806 that Kickapoo and Sauk warriors actively recruited Wea and others “to go to war with the Americans.”35 Likely for these reasons, Lewis avoided the words “confederacy” or “combination” when prompting warriors Thomas Jefferson to the Delawares, December 1808, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 332; Meriwether Lewis to William Henry Harrison (newspaper clipping), July 26, 1808, reel 3, LRSW-U, NARA. 31 7 Stat., 107–11. 32 Thomas Jefferson to Manchol, the great War Chief of my Children the Powtewatomies, n.d. [likely December 1808], reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA; William Clark to James Madison, April 10, 1811, reel 1, LRSW-IA, NARA; Charles Jouett to William Eustis, May 31, 1809, reel 24, LRSW-M, NARA. 33 Duke of Portland to Peter Russell, November 4, 1797, Correspondence of the Honourable Peter Russell, 2: 3. 34 Henry Dearborn to R. J. Meigs, Silas Dinsmoor and Sam’l Mitchell, June 20, 1805, and Henry Dearborn to William Henry Harrison, June 20, 1805, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA; William Henry Harrison to Henry Dearborn, July 10, 1805, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 151; James Bruff to James Wilkinson, March 19, 1805, reel 2, LRSW-M, NARA; Robert Forsyth to Prideaux Selby, May 19, 1805, v. 10, Indian Affairs, Superintendent General’s Office, MG 10, LAC. 35 William Henry Harrison to Thomas Jefferson, July 5, 1806, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 195. 30

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to continue variations of their alliances historically used to assail the Osage. Paradoxically, Harrison seemed spirited at the prospect that an Indian “force” would be raised among the Indians east of the Mississippi against the Osage despite mounting evidence that a similar combination of Indians might form against the United States.36 Although Potawatomi, Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, and other nations periodically formed alliances against the Osage, unified efforts rarely lasted more than a year and often coalesced as a fluid set of associations rather than a building coalition. Temporary alliances reflected shifting goals rooted in local aspirations. During this period, several powerful Indian leaders emerged, among them Main Poc, a charismatic Potawatomi wabeno and warrior. As a wabeno, Main Poc served as a spiritual and medicinal leader whose position offered him power not only to muster benevolent and malevolent spiritual forces, but also to influence individual and community decisions. As a war chief he beguiled American Indian agents for gifts and material support while regularly pursuing his own course of action at the expense of U.S. Indian policy goals, particularly when it came to the Osage.37 Spiritual authority along with his status as a war chief made Main Poc an influential powerbroker, but he rarely used his clout to engender coalition building; instead he pursued discrete interests of the western Potawatomi. By 1805, Main Poc was one among many spiritual leaders throughout the region who were vocal in their dissatisfaction with the state of their communities. Among the Seneca in the east, Handsome Lake preached sobriety and advocated restructuring of their economy upon sedentary agriculture. His alliance with Quaker missionaries who supported his spiritual and economic message helped him gain influence.38 In the West, many spiritual leaders ministered against federal policies of accommodation, instead favoring practices characterized as traditional. Often millennial in nature, their apocalyptic messages portended a rapid demise of Indians resulting from spiritual degeneration. Although such claims were used for a variety of purposes, they frequently served as code to decry or threaten individuals and groups who challenged their sacred authority or who worked closely with missionaries and agents of the federal government. The Munsee-Delaware prophetess Beata, who lived on the White River, claimed to possess the power to identify witches, and her accused were chiefs who signed the 1804 treaty with the United States as well as accommodationist Indians who associated with Moravian missionaries.39 The prophetess found William Henry Harrison to Henry Dearborn, July 12, 1808, reel 23, LRSW-M, NARA. R. David Edmunds, “Main Poc: Potawatomi Wabeno,” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 9 (Summer 1985), 260–3. 38 Robert S. Cox, “Supper and Celibacy: Quaker-Seneca Reflexive Missions,” in The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754–1814, David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson, eds. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001), 259–60. 39 Jay Miller, “The 1806 Purge among the Indiana Delaware: Sorcery, Gender, Boundaries, and Legitimacy,” Ethnohistory, vol. 41 (Spring 1994), 254–62. 36 37

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broad appeal among Indians seeking alternatives radically different from those presented by white Americans. In 1805 a group of Wyandot arrived seeking her help to identify witches living among them.40 The following year she led a purge of her own Delaware communities, leading to the deaths of a number of people, including Moravian converts and tribal leaders. Men and women who challenged purported traditional gender roles and practiced alleged nontraditional agriculture likewise found themselves subject to her ­critiques. Tetepachsit and Chief Hackingpomska fell as victims to her accusations, though only Tetepachsit died as a consequence of the purge.41 Despite the fervency of Beata’s traditionalism, her actions reveal flexibility, if not pragmatism. Buckongahelas, for instance, who signed the same 1804 treaty with the United States as Tetepachsit, received no condemnation as he promoted her ascension.42 Despite her authority Beata did not, or could not, translate her localized power into a broad coalition. She did, however, build an association with the rapidly rising Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa. Unlike Main Poc and Beata, Tenskwatawa aspired both to construct an Indian coalition against American expansionism and to combat the economic transformation taking place in Indian country. In 1805 he went by the name Lalawéthika and was not well regarded among the Shawnee as a warrior, hunter, or sober contributor to the community.43 That November, as Piankshaw chiefs readied to cede more land at the Treaty of Vincennes, Lalawéthika dreamed that the Great Spirit visited and instructed him to persuade other Indians to reject dependency on whites and pathways of accommodation in favor of autonomy and his compilation of prescriptive ritual practices and lifestyle. At first he visited and spoke at villages that would accept him, but as his popularity grew people sought him.44 During 1806, he strengthened his influence by working with Beata to root out witches and was a significant presence during the Delaware purge in 1806.45 By the end of that year, Lalawéthika crystallized a series of arguments about accommodation with Americans, land cessions, traditionalism, and spiritualism into a coherent message critiquing the current state of affairs in Indian country and providing a millenialist-style vision for the future.46 Armed with this message and assuming a new role as a spiritual leader, Lalawéthika changed John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 114. Miller, “1806 Purge among the Indiana Delaware,” 258–60. 42 7 Stat., 83. By the 1806 purge, Buckongahelas had died, but the likelihood that he would have suffered by her accusations was low because of the weight of his influence behind her power. Miller, “1806 Purge among the Indiana Delaware,” 252–3. 43 Sugden, Tecumseh, 113; R. David Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 31–3. 44 Sugden, Tecumseh, 116–17. 45 Miller, “1806 Purge among the Indiana Delaware,” 254, 257; Sugden, Tecumseh, 121–4. 46 Extract from the National Intelligencer of July 2, 1806, in Arthur W. Brady to Jacob P. Dunn, February 6, 1914, folder 16, Jacob Piatt Dunn Collection, ISL. 40 41

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his name to Tenskwatawa, but was often referred to as the Prophet. During the spring and summer of 1807, curious Indians and traders traveled to see him and he sent emissaries to deliver his speech throughout Indian country. Although the order of the elements of the speech occasionally changed, and the speakers occasionally inserted their own interpretations of the afterlife, the central economic argument remained unaltered.47 While presented in the context of spiritual and cultural revival, the heart of Tenskwatawa’s message conveyed a formula for economic independence.48 Alluding to migrations of refugees to the Mississippi River, the reorganization of Indian country after 1795, and years of depressed prices for pelts, the Prophet described how the Great Spirit had “looked round the World and saw [his] Red Children had greatly degenerated. That they had become scattered & miserable.” The paramount object of the “Red Children” should be economic independence, particularly from the United States. Because whites were not their “Fathers,” the Prophet proposed Indians should dissolve many of the economic relationships they held with European and American partners, especially in the fur trade. The Great Spirit, he contended, created two ­distinct, race-based political ecologies. Europeans and Americans had “Cattle, Sheep, Swine, & poultry for themselves only,” he said, not so subtly referring to accommodationists like Black Hoof, as well as others who casually incorporated livestock into their subsistence routine. Indians “are not to keep any of these animals, nor to eat of their meat. To you I have given the Deer, the Bear, and all wild animals, and the Fish that swim in the rivers.” Because these animals fell under the preserve of Indians, hunters were to minimize the use of these animals in trade. Indians had exploited animal resources, the Prophet observed, which was why the “animals of the Forest are few and scattered.” He chided his listeners, “you Destroy them yourselves for their skin only, and leave their bodies to rot.” “You must kill no more animals,” he explained, “than are necessary to feed & cloth you.” Such a revised set of practices, however, did not preclude trade with whites. Rather, he advised, Indians should have “very little intercourse” with them, a phrase meant to be interpreted positively. A wholesale embargo on trade presumably would have dissuaded many followers, so offering “very little intercourse” left wiggle room for individuals to access valued manufactured goods despite articulated proscriptions. For Tenskwatawa and the Great Spirit, a happy medium lay in reforming the trading regime. Because Indians possessed fraternal bonds with the English, French, and Spanish based on claimed Substance of a Talk delivered at Le Maiouitinong entrance of Lake Michigan by the Indian Chief Le Maigouis or the Trout, May 4 1807, reel 2, LRSW-U, NARA; Memorandum of a Council held at Saguina 5th of June 1807 and sent to the Governor by the Indians, reel 8, LRSW-M, NARA; Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 127. 48 Dowd, A Spirited Resistance, 130–1. 47

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common heredity with the Great Spirit, some trade with agents of those empires was permissible. Fictive kinship justified limited exchange of skins, canoes, and other Indian-manufactured items, but not meat, corn, sugar, and other foodstuffs. In contrast to fictive European kin, Americans were “the children of the Evil Spirit” with whom trade should not occur. Yet Tenskwatawa did not call for Indians to repudiate their debts to traders; rather his message advocated Indians pay only “half their credits.” In this way, Tenskwatawa provided an alternative to federal attempts to assert authority in the region by framing conditions of trade as the purview of Indians, not whites. Indeed much of the speech reads as a litany of prohibitions, limitations, conditions for, and rituals of trade analogous to federal statutes designed to manage trade with Indians, if more succinct and couched in spiritualism. Tenskwatawa’s message found willing ears among disheartened men and women eager to claim greater control over their economic destinies. By the late spring of 1807, “heralds” like the Ottawa La Maigouis spread the Prophet’s message “industriously” among many disaffected tribes.49 Delaware along the White River, Potawatomi and Kickapoo from Illinois, Sauk and Fox from the western Lakes, and Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwa from Michigan, among others, journeyed to see the Shawnee prophet.50 Men and women, young and old, traders, agents, and Indians gathered to hear the public proclamations, typically followed by secretive private councils away from inquisitive American and British ears.51 Tenskwatawa’s spiritual message served as a germ for the diplomatic missions of his brother Tecumseh. Recognizing the inherent power in the Prophet’s message to confront American expansionism and to promote greater unity among the nations, Tecumseh organized a village that would serve as a bulwark for both. The Indian village would be a center for a pan-ethnic confederacy and would draw authority away from accommodationist chiefs – some of whom had legitimate claims to tribal leadership, unlike Tecumseh. In 1806, the brothers erected the village near the abandoned remains of Fort Greenville.52 It was a bold move. Located on former Shawnee lands ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Greenville, its establishment represented a brazen challenge to federal authority, even as the site held inconsistent symbolism. In part, unilateral reclamation at Greenville served as a counterpoint to recent land cessions through a deliberate act of Indian sovereignty. Yet the village’s ­proximity Postscript of Francis Ducharme affidavit signed by Joseph Watson, July 8, 1807, enclosed in Charles Jouett to Henry Dearborn, July 6, 1807, reel 9, LRSW-M, NARA. 50 William Wells to Henry Dearborn, April 19, 1807, and April 25, 1807, reel 14, William Hull to Henry Dearborn, June 22, 1807, reel 8, Charles Jouett to Henry Dearborn, December 5, 1807, reel 9, and William Wells to William Henry Harrison, August 20, 1807, reel 8, LRSW-M, NARA; William Henry Harrison to Henry Dearborn, February 18, 1808, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 284; John Sugden, “Tecumseh’s Travels Revisited,” Indian Magazine of History, vol. 96 (June 2000), 153. 51 J. Dunham to William Hull, May 20, 1807, reel 8, LRSW-M, NARA. 52 Sugden, Tecumseh, 128–9, 137. 49

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to Greenville highlighted an avowed commitment to the 1795 treaty, a claim reiterated by Tecumseh and his supporters on numerous occasions.53 Perhaps because of the confusing symbolism, in addition to pressure from the United States to abandon the site, the brothers and their followers struggled to make the new Greenville settlement a success. The ascendant popularity and political power of the brothers sparked a leadership struggle for the future of Indian country. Black Hoof, Little Turtle, and other chiefs with close ties to the federal government dismissed the authority of Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh, as well as their anti-American stance. The brothers replied in kind, decrying leaders who sanctioned accommodation and willingly signed cession treaties. In April, Tenskwatawa denounced Black Hoof, Blacksnake, and others as practitioners of “bad medicine,” the beginning of a series of events resulting in the murders of two Wapakoneta residents.54 The arrival of William Kirk provided at least a marginal veil of federal support for the settlement, but a threat of further violence haunted Black Hoof for years.55 The swift escalation to bloodshed in this and other cases severely undermined Tecumseh’s early initiatives to construct a united Shawnee front as a foundation for a broader coalition against American encroachments.56 For administrative observers in Washington, the rising popularity of Tenskwatawa, while viewed as an important development, was overshadowed by challenges to U.S. commerce and sovereignty in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic. Since the 1780s, the United States had paid tribute to the North African Barbary states to prevent those powers from plundering American shipping in the Mediterranean and enslaving or ransoming American crews. Seemingly each year, costs of tributes rose until they represented just over twenty percent of the federal government’s annual budget by the end of the 1790s. Eager to eliminate privateering and reduce the costs of tribute, the Jefferson administration pursued a more belligerent strategy than its predecessors, ultimately going to war with the pasha of Tripoli. The Tripoli Treaty in 1805 created a tentative peace, which quickly deteriorated as the modest U.S. navy exited the Mediterranean to protect American shipping from British and French interference.57 The wars between Britain and France following the French Revolution benefited American commerce. With so much European energy dedicated to war, American merchants garnered a larger share of the carrying trade, transporting goods from the West Indies to European markets via American See for instance, White River Delaware Chiefs to William Wells, June 22, 1805, reel 33, and Memorandum of a Council held at Saguina 5th of June 1807 and sent to the Governor by the Indians, reel 8, LRSW-M, NARA. 54 William Kirk to Henry Dearborn, May 28, 1807, reel 9, LRSW-M, NARA. 55 Shawnee to William Kirk, April 14, 1809, reel 25, LRSW-M, NARA. 56 Sugden, Tecumseh, 137; Charles Jouett to Henry Dearborn, July 25, 1808, reel 24, LRSW-M, NARA. 57 Frank Lambert, The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 93, 177–8. 53

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ports. By essentially laundering commodities, merchants circumvented trade restrictions enacted by each belligerent, a practice accepted by the Atlantic community through the 1790s. But when the peace established by the Treaty of Amiens collapsed in 1803, Britain escalated its economic war against Napoleonic France, unilaterally declaring the carrying trade to France illegal.58 British naval vessels not only refused American ships access to French ports, they obstructed American commerce departing American harbors. Although British-imposed limits on the carrying trade mainly affected only U.S. port cities, a growing choir of voices maintained that imperial challenges to the re-export trade threatened American economic independence.59 Scholars Peter Onuf and Nicholas Onuf capture the significance for the national state, arguing that as ideas of independence and union were inseparable, interference in international trade threatened the prospect of union.60 That Britain refused to sign a treaty to resolve the dispute further denigrated the status of the United States as a sovereign state. Napoleon’s Berlin Decree in 1806 and Parliament’s Orders in Council of 1807 intensified restrictions by both parties, hindering American commerce to Europe. The British system of impressment struck at national-state authority and added to American outrage. To meet labor demands for its expanded and understaffed navy during the war with France, British subjects were often pressed into service. The forced labor and difficult working conditions aboard the king’s vessels prompted many seamen to desert, at least some of whom found work on American merchant marine vessels. As demand for sailors outpaced supply, the British navy began forcibly boarding American ships, impressing British subjects and taking American citizens in the process. Unable to defend American shipping or match the strength of the British navy, the Jefferson administration pursued a diplomatic resolution, but met only frustration. To provide an umbrella of protection, Congress passed legislation as early as 1796 to document seamen as citizens and sailors resorted to tattooing their bodies with symbols identifying them as American citizens as a means to protect themselves.61 Angst about impressments exploded into outrage in late June 1807 when the HMS Leopard fired upon the USS Chesapeake in Chesapeake Bay after the American vessel refused to be boarded. The Chesapeake was woefully unprepared for action and surrendered quickly. British forces boarded the Chesapeake and took four accused British deserters with them. Emotional Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 211; Leonard J. Sadosky, Revolutionary Negotiations: Indians, Empires, and Diplomats in the Founding of America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009), 183–7. 59 Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 214–16. 60 Peter Onuf and Nicholas Onuf, Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776–1814 (Madison, WI.: Madison House, 1993), Part III. 61 Act of May 28, 1796, ch. 36, 1 Stat., 477–8; Simon Newman, “Reading the Bodies of Early American Seafarers,” WMQ, vol. 55 (Jan. 1998), 76–9. 58

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nationalist cries from war hawks screamed off the pages of southern and ­western papers. Even anglophiles in New England, where commercial relationships with Britain were an important feature of the maritime economy, acknowledged the gravity of Britain’s actions.62 While resentful of impressments, many white westerners found the trade crisis more compelling and resonant.63 Ohio Valleyans felt the pinch as commodity prices declined in 1806, making restrictions on trans-Atlantic commerce an intimate affair.64 Western newspaper editors identified Parliament as the culprit, though Napoleon’s Berlin Decree received its fair share of ink as well. British efforts to capture a greater portion of the fur trade in the western Great Lakes and Mississippi and Missouri Valleys, which many westerners viewed as a threat to the stability and growth of the American trans-Appalachian economy, enhanced regional Anglophobia.65 When Congress passed an embargo prohibiting the exportation of any products from the United States in December 1807, it did so with widespread western support.66 Although divisions over the embargo grew with time, westerners overwhelmingly viewed Britain as a main cause of their economic woes and so sustained their backing of the embargo.67 Jefferson and most members of Congress championed the embargo as a practical alternative to war to cow Britain into ending its aggressive trade policies and impressment of Americans. The U.S. economy, however, lacked the potency to shape Atlantic world politics. The value of British exports to the United States greatly exceeded imports from the former colonies, muting the disruptive potential of the embargo.68 With the legislation, Americans who had experienced a vibrant economy and rising commodity prices since the depression of 1802 saw both tumble, with prices declining twenty percent in Boston and other major cities.69 A similar pattern emerged in the Ohio Valley though the effects were uneven. There, tobacco farmers struggled but hemp producers profited comfortably.70 Nevertheless, most westerners met tough times as they saw fewer returns from the market and their real income fell.71 See especially, Reginald Horsman, The War of 1812 (New York: Knopf, 1969), chapter 1; Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1805–1812 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963). 63 George Rogers Taylor, “Agrarian Discontent in the Mississippi Valley Preceding the War of 1812,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 39 (Aug. 1931), 490; Reginald Horsman, “Western War Aims, 1811–1812,” Indiana Magazine of History, vol. 53 (Mar. 1957). 64 Taylor, “Agrarian Discontent,” 486, 490. 65 Julius W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1812 (New York: MacMillan, 1925), chap. 1. 66 Act of December 22, 1807, ch. 5, 2 Stat., 451–3; Herbert Heaton, “Non-Importation, 1806– 1812,” Journal of Economic History, vol. 1 (Nov. 1941), 179. 67 Taylor, “Agrarian Discontent,” 490. 68 Perkins, Prologue to War, 167–9. 69 W. B. Smith, “Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1795–1824,” Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 9 (Oct. 1927), table 3, 181. 70 George Rogers Taylor, “Prices in the Mississippi Valley Preceding the War of 1812,” Journal of Economic and Business History, vol. 3 (1930–2), 157. 71 Taylor, “Prices in the Mississippi Valley Preceding the War of 1812,” 161. 62

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When Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh moved to the Greenville settlements, westerners and the federal government could not help but view it as part of a building crisis of the national state. By the middle of summer 1807, Greenville became a mecca for Indians angry about recent treaties and declining fur prices, as well as those curious about a confederacy or the Prophet’s message. Indian agent William Wells closely monitored the Greenville settlement from his post at Fort Wayne. His family ties to Little Turtle alone gave him reason to oppose the pan-ethnic enterprise of the parvenu Shawnee brothers. That he also had been severely admonished by his superiors for allowing the brothers’ settlement to take root only added to his distaste for them. In the spring he notified the villagers that their presence directly challenged American sovereignty, a warning which fell flat among the residents.72 “Nothing can prevent the assembly of the Indians at Greenville” Wells wrote in exasperation, except “Driving the Shawnese prophet . . . and his band from that place which cannot be done with words.”73 White Ohio Valleyans considered the material and political consequences of the Indian repossession. Residents petitioned Wells to remove the assemblage lest it cause people “to abandon their possessions and move into the interior settlements,” both “depopulating our frontier settlements and destroying the prosperity of our growing county.”74 Wells endorsed their claims. At “lowest calculation,” he speciously reported to the secretary of war, the Prophet “prevented 20,000 people from settling in the State of Ohio.” To the north, William Hull observed in Detroit that the “people in this country are in a high state of alarm, on account of the Indians.” He explained that the elevated anxiety “has principally arisen in consequence of a belief, that We are on the eve of a War with Great Britain.”75 With pressure mounting, the struggling Greenville settlement decided to relocate to the Wabash River, where the villagers established Prophetstown in the spring of 1808. If the United States was on the verge of war with Great Britain, then it was on their account alone.76 Parliament held little interest in drawing its former colonies into the conflict, unless they too would oppose Napoleon. Even though a small handful of individual British traders encouraged their Indian contacts to go to war against the United States, formal policy emanating from Whitehall remained dedicated to peace. Lord Castlereagh advised Canadian governor general James Craig to nurture good relations with Indians not because of “their use as allies,” but rather “their Destructiveness if Enemies.”77 Upper William Wells to the Shawnes [sic] residing at Green ville [sic], April 22, 1807, reel 14, LRSW-M, NARA. 73 William Wells to Henry Dearborn, July 14, 1807, reel 15, LRSW-M, NARA. 74 Petition of subscribers from Staunton, Miami County, State of Ohio, 8th July 1807 to the Honorable William Wells, reel 15, LRSW-M, NARA. 75 William Hull to Henry Dearborn, August 4, 1807, reel 8, LRSW-M, NARA. 76 John Latimer, 1812: War with America (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 33. 77 Lord Castlereagh to James Craig, April 8, 1809, MPHC, 23: 69. 72

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Canadian installations received larger shipments of Indians goods after 1807, but the Indian Department specifically purposed these supplies to be used “in the event of a War,” not in deliberate preparation for an offensive assault.78 When British authorities at Malden and other places met with Indians, they did so to cultivate diplomatic ties and gain intelligence on activities in the region, not to pursue the nefarious imperial designs many federal agents imagined and communicated to Washington. In 1807 British Indian agents went so far as to advise visiting chiefs not to listen to Tenskwatawa, a message they communicated broadly, not only at principal forts.79 That year Indian traders in Upper Canada reported that they failed to see any threat of an Indian war. One quipped that “Americans generally make great noise & stick at triffles [sic].”80 British observers acknowledged a surge in violence between settlers and Indians, especially in the ceded territories, but as merchant Isaac Todd noted, the Americans have “themselves to blaim [sic]” on that account.81 British officials remained resolute on peace into 1811 when Craig instructed lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada Francis Gore “to prevent a rupture, between the Indians, and the subjects of the United States,” and “to instruct the officers of the Indian Department to use all their influence to dissuade the Indians from their projected plan of hostility, giving them clearly to understand, that they must not expect any assistance from us.”82 In the midst of agendas to forestall war, both Americans and Canadians made military preparations as uncertainty rose in the Atlantic and the West.83 As the United States failed to overcome challenges to its sovereignty and its economy languished, Americans scapegoated British agents for the deteriorating relationships with Indian communities rather than admit their own complicity. For instance, in 1808, the Indian agent at Prairie du Chien became highly anxious about the activities of British traders in the region.84 During the previous three years, the federal government had endeavored to obstruct British traders extending their fur trade networks into the upper Mississippi and Missouri valleys. To that end, northern Louisiana territorial governor James Wilkinson declared a regional embargo to limit imperial influence, proclaiming that “No Goods or Merchandize will be permitted to enter the said River, which have not been manufactured in the United States or have not Requisition for Indian Presents in Case of War with the United States, 1809, MPHC, 23: 70. Speech of Kawachawan, or the Eddy, the Oldest Chief of the Ottawa Nation, August 24, 1807, reel 8, LRSW-M, NARA. 80 John Askin, Jr. to John Askin, September 8, 1807, in Milo Milton Quaife, ed., The John Askin Papers, vol. 2 (Detroit: Detroit Library Commission, 1928–31), 572. 81 Isaac Todd to John Askin, October 1, 1807, John Askin Papers, 2: 574. 82 James Craig to Francis Gore, February 2, 1811, MPHC, 25: 280. 83 John Askin, Jr. to Isaac Todd, September 4, 1807, John Askin Papers, 2: 570; William Hull to Henry Dearborn, October 9, 1807, reel 8, LRSW-M, NARA. 84 Henry Dearborn to John Campbell, January 26, 1808, reel 2, and Henry Dearborn to Charles Jouett, January 26, 1808, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA. 78 79

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been imported by a Citizen of the U.S. or person resident within the Territories thereof.”85 Outraged Montreal merchants responded by remonstrating the Canadian government to seek redress for what they viewed as egregious violations of Jay’s Treaty.86 Their objections redoubled with the imposition of the congressionally sanctioned embargo in 1807, which they contended should not include Indian country.87 Nevertheless, when Sauk, Fox, and Iowa Indians expressed antipathy toward the United States in 1808, federal agents refused to consider that the Indians acted on their own volition. When writing to the secretary of war, they characterized the incipient conflict as the work of unlicensed Canadian traders. Their letters failed to address lingering Indian anger over the questionable 1804 treaty signed in St. Louis and federal attempts to insert its authority west of Lake Michigan.88 “Who does not know that the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savage are always employed as the instruments of British vengeance,” William Henry Harrison asked rhetorically in 1807.89 With security against British incursions in the West foremost in his mind, Jefferson authorized a second series of treaties beginning in 1807.90 That year, the Treaty of Detroit expanded American possessions in southeastern Michigan from the Maumee River to Lake Huron, and increased the likelihood that Wayne County  – as it was known at the time  – might become a state.91 Statehood, it was imagined, would inhibit the Indian trade between Upper Canada and the Mississippi Valley. The aforementioned Osage treaty at Fort Clark in 1808 not only subjugated Osage communities to federal authority, but also opened lands for commercial development. Both of these treaties viewed future settlement as a method for engendering improved security for the national state. Among the treaties of this period, the 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne stands out as somewhat anomalous. Although William Henry Harrison had authorization for the treaty, he pressured Delaware, Potawatomi, Miami, and Eel River chiefs to relinquish more land than he was instructed to seek – two tracts that encompassed dwindling Indian hunting territories in southern Indiana. He later pursued and obtained complementary treaties with the Kickapoo and Wea.92 No immediate or impending demand for land motivated James Wilkinson, Proclamation in Regard to Trade, August 26, 1805, MPHC, 25: 217. Memorial of Montreal merchants to Thomas Dunn, President of the Province of Lower Canada, November 8, 1805, MPHC, 25: 218–21. 87 James H. Craig to D. M. Erskine, March 8, 1808, MHPC, 25: 241. 88 George Hoffman and Samuel Abbott to Henry Dearborn, August 15, 1808, reel 23, and John Campbell to Henry Dearborn, April 7, 1808, reel 23, LRSW-M, NARA; William T. Hagen, The Sac and Fox Indians (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 38–9. 89 William Henry Harrison Message to the Legislature, August 17, 1807, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 236. 90 Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, December 22, 1808, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 323. 91 7 Stat., 105. 92 7 Stat., 113–4. Wea chiefs agreed separately, as did Kickapoo chiefs who further extended the cession area. See 7 Stat., 116, 117. 85 86

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Harrison. “Our settlements here are much cramped by the vicinity of the Indian lands,” he explained. By creating a buffer zone, he hoped to encourage settlement in Indiana.93 So in this sense, the cession still fit within a broader security model pursued by the Jefferson administration. The sum of these treaties propelled agitation in Indian country. Many neutral and even some accommodationist chiefs gradually were persuaded that the United States intended to acquire all territory between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes.94 Tenskwatawa, preaching in Prophetstown, intensified his rhetoric and sermonized against chiefs who “abandoned the Interests of their respective nations and sold all the Indians Land to the United States.” Only by uniting could the Indians “be able to watch the Boundary Line between the Indians and white people.” If “a white man put his foot over” that line, then unified “warriors could easily put him back.”95 His words reflected and gave energy to the continuing property war in the cessions where warriors “threatened to kill the people unless they instantly moved off” their settlements.96 Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi men reported that the Prophet instructed them “to receive the Tomahawk” and “destroy all the white people at Vincennes, and all those that live on the Wabash & Ohio as low down as the mouth of Ohio and as high up as Cincinnati.”97 Native American communities west of Lake Michigan vacillated in response to the new American institutional presence there. Many nations initially responded favorably to the arrival of an American Indian agent at Prairie du Chien, who, in addition to British traders, became an outlet for regional trade. The construction of Fort Madison at the mouth of the Des Moines River in 1808 was less popular. At least one group, led by the young Sauk warrior Black Hawk, expressed dissatisfaction with the fort by organizing a raid against it.98 Main Poc, who had long been resistant to an American presence in the upper Mississippi Valley, renewed his critiques and antagonized chiefs who worked with the United States, calling them “nothing better than dogs.” William Wells recognized that Main Poc was “the pivot on which the minds of all western Indians turned,” which in part made him “a dangerous man.” He therefore

William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, May 16, 1809, reel 23, LRSW-M, NARA. Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet, 92; Sugden, Tecumseh, 185. 95 William Wells to Henry Dearborn, April 20, 1808, reel 33, LRSW-M, NARA. 96 William Henry Harrison to Henry Dearborn, August 1, 1810 (quote), Harrison to William Eustis, April 23, 1811, John Lalime to William Clark, May 26, 1811, William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, June 6, 1811, William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, July 2, 1811, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 453, 506, 511, 513, 527; Sugden, Tecemseh, 177–8; William Clark to William Eustis, November 23, 1811, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 802. 97 William Wells to William Henry Harrison, April 8, 1809, reel 23, LRSW-M, NARA. 98 William Henry Harrison to John Johnston, May 4, 1809, reel 1, folder 2, box 1, John Johnston Papers, 1801–1860, OHS; Hagen, Sac and Fox Indians, 41–2; Gary Clayton Anderson, Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650–1862 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 85. 93 94

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advised Washington to do all it could to secure Main Poc’s friendship rather than find him “a very troublesome Enemy.”99 As the stakes in Indian country rose, Native Americans perceived to be sympathetic to the United States often found themselves besieged by the growing anti-American movement. Black Hoof saw his personal property targeted when the Potawatomi warrior Yellow Hair stole a horse and other items from him.100 When Ottawa, Wyandot, and Potawatomi chiefs met to discuss abrogating the Treaty of Detroit, they also considered whether the Indian signatories to the document ought to be killed.101 Federal agents normally monitored such events as a part of their attempt to transform Indian country to their liking and to provide security to settlements. Keenly aware of federal concerns and policy goals, Tecumseh cast the United States as a player in, not neutral observer of, Indian country. Following the murders of several Kickapoo chiefs who authorized a land cession, Tecumseh implicated the United States in their deaths, advising William Henry Harrison that he and others were “prepared to punish those chiefs who come forward to propose to sell their land.” Land cessions, he warned, “will produce war among the different tribes,” ominously adding, “I do not know what will be the consequence to the white people.”102 Tecumseh’s case against land cessions built on the supposition of common rights earlier articulated at the Treaty of Greenville. Rhetorically, the language of common rights provided a framework to condemn recent treaties, to justify circumventing the authority of individual chiefs in favor of consensus treaty making, and to oppose U.S. expansionism.103 The illusion of consensus it conveyed glossed over deep fissures within Indian country, which remained divided over land issues and the place of the United States in the region. Common rights nevertheless became perhaps the most important principle for asserting Indian authority and autonomy. Citing the Treaty of Greenville, an envoy of Wyandot chiefs and warriors noted that the United States explicitly “relinquish[ed] their claims to all other Indian lands northward of the river Ohio, eastward of the Mississippi, and westward and southward of the Great Lakes.” Wyandot leaders interpreted this clause not only as evidence of exclusive Indian sovereignty over land but also providing Indians right to determine ownership. U.S. officials assumed proprietary rights to all Indian country located on its side of the international border and restricted Indians to selling their lands only to the United States.104 Having failed to gain argumentative ground, the party William Wells to Henry Dearborn, April 20, 1808, reel 33, LRSW-M, NARA. Henry Dearborn to Charles Jouett, June 9, 1808, reel 2, LSSW-IA, NARA; Charles Jouett to Henry Dearborn, July 25, 1808, reel 24, LRSW-M, NARA. 101 William Wells to Henry Dearborn, April 2, 1808, reel 33, LRSW-M, NARA. 102 Tecumseh’s Speech to Governor Harrison, 20th August 1810, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 465, 466. 103 Ibid., 465. 104 As Horsman argues, the United States acknowledged Indian right to soil. What the United States had not established, as discussed in Chapter 3, was a protocol to obtain lands beyond 99

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of Wyandot characterized “everything that had been done since” the Treaty of Greenville as “good for nothing” and they committed themselves to work with Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh “to put a stop to the encroachments” and “endeavor to recover what had been unjustly taken from them.”105 For many recent scholars, the watershed moment in the anti-cession movement was the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809. In an ambitious contrivance, Harrison gathered chiefs with whom he had strong relationships: Winamek and Five Medals (represented by his son) for the Potawatomi; Little Turtle and Silver Heels for the Miami; and the Beaver for the Delaware.106 As beneficiaries of the annuity system, each chief already had raised the ire of younger warriors opposed to land sales.107 The finalized treaty exposed Harrison and the federal government as imperious, insatiable, and possessing little compassion for the interests of Indian communities. Scholars contend that leading up to that treaty neither Tenskwatawa nor Tecumseh embraced martial attitudes toward the United States but its signing broadened opposition to American expansionism into calls for war.108 “You are continually driving the red people” fumed Tecumseh to Harrison, and “you will drive them into the great lake where they can’t either stand or work.”109 The informal property war continued in the cession areas, as Tecumseh worked for two years to construct a pan-ethnic confederacy that could match American forces.110 Ultimately, Harrison rather than Tecumseh’s men initiated formal conflict in November 1811. No single incident sparked the American advance into Indian country. The territorial governor remained irritated over horses stolen by Indians, but the accused did not live at Prophetstown. Raids into the cession areas and vigilante settler responses destabilized the Indian country frontier, but no one event received heightened attention from westerners or was seen as uniquely egregious. Tenskwatawa had recently confiscated a federal supply of salt, but that act did not result in a crisis. Since the spring, Harrison had ordered a strong militia presence, ostensibly for the protection of white settlers, but his critics read militia patrols as irrefutable evidence that the territorial governor intended to start an Indian war.111 To forestall war, Tecumseh the treaty process. In this regard, Indians like Tecumseh asserted autonomy to dictate that process in Indian country. The United States remained committed to the ends more than the means: land cessions. Speech of the Principal Chiefs and Warriors of the Wyandots, delivered on the 30th Day of September, 1809, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 1: 796; Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 54–5; Treaty of Greenville, arts. 4 & 5, 7 Stat., 52, 53. 105 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, June 14, 1810, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 424. 106 7 Stat., 115. 107 Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet, 81. 108 Ibid., 81–2; Horsman, Expansion and Indian Policy, 166–7; Sugden, Tecumseh, 187. 109 Tecumseh’s Speech to Governor Harrison, 20th August 1810, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 465. 110 Sugden, “Tecumseh’s Travels Revisited.” 111 John Badollet to Albert Gallatin, November 19, 1811, Correspondence of John Badollet, 209.

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met with Harrison in July before departing to meet with western Indians in an effort to convince them to join the confederacy. Even President James Madison expressed a desire to maintain peace in the West. On July 20, Secretary of War William Eustis instructed the territorial governor that “hostilities (of any kind or to any degree not indispensable required) should be avoided.” To aid Harrison’s initiative to improve security in the cession areas, Eustis promised to send additional soldiers.112 Harrison nevertheless became convinced that military action must be taken. The western territorial governors shared a desire to see Prophetstown “­disbanded.” Harrison, Ninian Edwards (Illinois Territory), and Benjamin Howard (Missouri Territory) measured territorial progress in terms of population increase, economic development, and advancement through the territorial stages. As territorial expansion and union became inseparable in the minds of many white westerners, they perceived regional instability and obstacles to statehood as not only dangers to their local communities, but manifest threats to the national state.113 The “pecuniary interests of the United States are as much concerned in affecting” the disbanding of Prophetstown settlement, Harrison wrote, “as are its honor and dignity and the peace and prosperity of the citizens of the Frontiers.”114 So, citing an inconsequential theft of eight horses one week earlier, Harrison and his force set forth from Vincennes toward the Wabash settlement in early October. Seemingly conscious of the flimsy rationale for his advance, he cautiously wrote to Secretary of War Eustis, “I sincerely wish that my instructions were such as to authorise [sic] me to march immediately to the Prophets Town.”115 Short of the village near the Tippecanoe River, Harrison ordered his men to make camp. During the course of the October march, he waxed belligerent compared to his initial circumspect tone. By the time his men neared the Tippecanoe River, he wholly blamed Tenskwatawa for necessitating the expedition. The Prophet has “not contented himself with throwing the gauntlet,” he blustered in a letter to Eustis, but “has absolutely commenced the war.”116 With Tecumseh away on a diplomatic mission, Tenskwatawa assumed a war chief’s mantle as Harrison’s men approached. Rather than wait for an inevitable assault, the Prophet planned to strike Harrison early the next morning. The gambit on November 7 failed miserably and the infant confederacy suffered a severe defeat. Two days later, Harrison sent a company of dragoons William Eustis to William Henry Harrison, July 20, 1811, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 537. 113 Onuf and Onuf, Federal Union, Modern World. 114 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, August 13, 1811, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 555. 115 William Eustis to William Henry Harrison, August 29, 1811, and William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, October 6, 1811, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 560–1, 595. 116 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, October 13, 1811, Governors Messages and Letters, 1: 599–600. 112

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to Prophetstown where they captured horses, damaged buildings, and burned thousands of acres of crops.117 Just as he had witnessed during Anthony Wayne’s 1794 campaign, Harrison saw a diaspora as families sought support from other Indian communities. But whereas Wayne’s victory initiated an end to hostilities, Harrison’s radicalized politics in Indian country. When Tecumseh heard of the defeat, he did not rush back to the Wabash. Rather he used the American attack to recruit heavily among energized Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwa, and Ottawa communities.118 Upon Harrison’s return to Vincennes, he received belated support for his expedition from the Madison administration. The president instructed him to restore peace but to convey to the Indians that he was “justly and highly offended” by the violence they perpetrated and would order another military campaign if the war continued.119 Congressmen, especially from western states, sounded their approval, wreathing British offenses overseas with those they perceived in the West. “Upon the Wabash, through the influence of British agents, and within our territorial sea by the British navy,” Kentucky representative Richard Mentor Johnson exhorted, “the war has already commenced.”120 By synecdoche and metonym congressmen articulated threats to the national state through a language of “our rights” and “our honor.” In their eyes, by issuing the Orders in Council and fomenting Indian war, Britain interfered with American commerce by inhibiting the ability of citizens to bring “the products of their own soil and the acquisitions of their own industry to a market.”121 Madison’s war message months later on June 1, 1812 borrowed this commercial phraseology and presented a list of offenses committed by Britain. His address identified threats to the sovereignty, commerce, and bonds of union. “The warfare just renewed by the savages on one of our extensive frontiers” neatly legitimated a declaration of war as a defensive response to preserve the national state.122 After the Battle of Tippecanoe, several chiefs sued for peace, but their efforts failed to slow momentum building behind the anti-American movement. Still lacking sufficient warriors and a meaningful alliance with Britain, Tecumseh struggled to hold back the tide and prevent war from erupting.123 Little enthusiasm for a North American war existed among officials in Whitehall, especially as their hopes for defeating France brightened after victories in the Peninsular Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet, 100, 110–1, 114. Sudgen, “Tecumseh’s Travels Revisited,” 165. 119 William Eustis to William Henry Harrison, January 17, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 14. 120 Annals of Congress, 12th Cong., 1st sess., 456–7. 121 Ibid., 376, 457, 601; Annals of Congress, 11th Cong., 2nd sess., 1869. 122 James Madison’s War Message to Congress, June 1, 1812, Am. St. Pap., For. Rel., 3: 407. 123 Speeches of Indians at Massassinway, May 15, 1812, and Tecumseh to Matthew Elliot, June 8, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 51, 61; Isaac Brock to unaddressed, December 2, 1811, MPHC, 15: 57. 117 118

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War and Napoleon’s decision to march against Russia. With their hands tied to British wartime policy, Indian agents in Upper Canada offered at best tentative support to Tecumseh and other Indian warriors. During the first six months of 1812, Upper Canadian legislative councilmember William Claus estimated that Indians received less powder and no lead at Amherstberg, a substantial departure from recent patterns.124 British commitment to the confederacy remained wafer thin until the United States declared war on June 18, 1812, prompting the British to retaliate in kind. Notwithstanding the declaration of war, Britain limped into the conflict. The Prevost-Dearborn Armistice, signed only two months later, lasted less than a week, but revealed how shallow imperial support for the Indian cause was.125 In the marble and sandstone corridors of Washington, DC, hawks viewed American belligerence as a means to resolve crises of national state authority and preserve the union through an assertion of sovereignty and exercise in expansionism. Word that Parliament repealed the Orders in Council affecting American maritime trade just two days prior to the United States’ declaration of war was not enough to extinguish their passion. Abrogation of the Orders in Council eliminated only one of the casus belli, but did not preclude Parliament from reinstating the blockade if conditions in Europe changed. Only through a definitive demonstration of national-state power in the Atlantic and West, they reasoned, could the United States amass the leverage necessary to remedy its catalogue of grievances. Madison believed that an invasion of Canada would compel Parliament to remove strictures on American commerce in the Atlantic and certify American international rights in a treaty.126 That strategy necessitated confronting the Native American confederacy on the western front as well. Unlike the 1780s when the federal government obstructed rather than partnered with militias, settlers did not have to wait years for federal intervention on their behalf. When they raised militias and vigilante groups to destroy Indian communities and crops – often without regard to that village’s culpability in previous raids – federal authorities not only condoned and defended their actions, they supported them. In late August, William Henry Harrison’s appointment to brigadier general came with instructions to protect the Ohio Valley territorial frontiers in part by coordinating with the territorial governors, as well as the governors of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio to obtain volunteers and militia support.127 As a territorial governor, Harrison embraced expansionism through the marriage of local and national interests, an approach he continued in his new William Claus to Isaac Brock, June 16, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 62. Isaac Brock to Lord Liverpool, August 29, 1812, Messages and Letters, 2: 103. 126 J. C. A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 5–6. 127 William Eustis to William Henry Harrison, August 22, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 91–2. 124 125

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position. Because of his experiences in Wayne’s campaign and as territorial governor, he understood the productive capacity of Indian country. From very early in the conflict, Harrison positioned his men to control the fruitful agricultural corridor from the Maumee River west into Indiana even though Indian communities there farmed only a fraction of land compared to 1794. Nevertheless, that area remained strategically important for its resources, as a transportation corridor, and as a gateway to the Ohio Valley. By gaining possession of it, security improved for Ohio Valley farmers, whose produce and livestock would be critical to the war effort. Control of the Maumee Valley seemed certain so long as the citadel at Detroit remained in American hands. When William Hull’s army successfully invaded Upper Canada in mid-July, momentum seemed to favor the United States. The swift and embarrassing ­surrender of Detroit after British forces overwhelmed the underprepared installation less than one month later deflated bloated expectations of Ohio Valleyans and war hawks nationally. Consequently, until the United States managed to recapture Detroit in September 1813, maintaining control of northern Ohio and Indiana became perhaps the most important strategic goal for the northwestern front. In early October 1812, Harrison ordered Brigadier General James Winchester to “occupy the rapids of the Miami [Maumee] as speedily as possible, for the purpose of securing the corn which is growing there, and which is believed to amount to several hundred acres, an object of no little importance to the future movements of the army.”128 Once accomplished, Harrison sketched how subsequent expeditions would scour Indian country, “destroying the provisions collected in the Indians villages, scourging the Indians themselves and disabling them from interfering with your operations.”129 Efforts to curtail Native American agricultural production intensified after reports arrived that British agents appropriated supplies from Michigan residents near Detroit, inciting American outrage.130 Indian warriors and their British partners likewise placed strategic importance on the Maumee Valley. Following the American defeat at Detroit, Winamek (Potawatomi) led a siege of Fort Wayne to force an American retreat and protect Potawatomi crops to the north and west. Although they failed to take the fort, warriors killed livestock of white settlers in the region and scalped the clerk from the Fort Wayne Indian factory.131 In October, a mix of Indians and British soldiers, along with Matthew Elliott, approached the rapids of the William Henry Harrison to James Winchester, October 4, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 161–2. 129 Edward Tupper to William Henry Harrison, November 10, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 207; William Eustis to William Henry Harrison, December 16, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 269. 130 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, December 12, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 240. 131 Edmunds, Potawatomis, 189. 128

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Maumee River, not far from the Glaize, where Americans had planted corn and allowed unfenced cattle to wander in the woods. They intended to “feed” on the corn and “annoy” General Winchester’s troops who patrolled the area.132 For a month they pestered his men before being driven away.133 Later that year, when Harrison sent troops to destroy the Mississinewa (Miami) towns and their fields, a group of British and Indian forces attempted to take advantage of the distracted American forces by capturing unharvested crops at the Maumee rapids. The “British and Indians were not able to take off the corn,” Harrison reported to the secretary of war, while also reassuring his commander that he had taken steps to ensure that “they shall not have another opportunity of removing it.”134 Rather than engage in indiscriminate destruction during military expeditions, American commanders practiced selective targeting of property in Indian towns. Harrison’s orders to John B. Campbell for the expedition to the Mississinewa towns included instructions not to damage property owned by an “old Canadian by the name of Godfrey” who had “always” been “a friend of the U. States.”135 Although many commanders similarly protected the property of notable Indian allies, they were not always successful. Officers, ordinary soldiers, and militia commonly believed that Indians were uniformly anti-American and used that racist assumption to justify appropriating or razing Indian crops and possessions.136 While stationed just north of modern-day Bellefontaine, Ohio, not far from Wapakoneta, during September and October 1812, soldiers perfidiously ravished property  – probably Wyandot  – from nearby villages: crops, cattle, hogs, chickens, “agricultural implements, some weapons of war . . . kitchen furniture,” “neat small brass and copper kettles.” Reportedly, some of their superior officers turned a blind eye to the thefts in return for half the profits after the booty “had been converted into money.” Indian families, who had dispersed in fear upon the arrival of troops, returned “sorely vexed at the conduct of the army,” and appealed to federal officials for compensation.137 Matthew Elliot to William Claus, October 28, 1812, MPHC, 15: 173. Reginald Horsman, Matthew Elliot, British Indian Agent (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964), 202. 134 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, December 24, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 253. 135 William Henry Harrison to John B. Campbell, November 25, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 231. 136 R. David Edmunds, “Forgotten Allies: The Loyal Shawnees and the War of 1812,” in David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson, eds., The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754– 1814 (East Lansing: Michigan University Press, 2001), 337–51. See for instance, Indemnity to Indians for property destroyed during the late war by citizens and soldiers of the U. States as pr. Acct. No. 21, November 1, 1815, June 15, 1815, June 16, 1816, reel 1, folder 4, box 1, John Johnston Papers, 1801–60, OHS. 137 October 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 1812 in Nathan Newsome, “A short summary of a journey taken by Volunteers from Gallia County; for the purpose of destroying Indians and the Invasion of Canada,” OHS. 132 133

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As the American military marched through Indian country, efforts to ­ istinguish between the property of friendly and enemy Indians fit within a d shifting set of strategies to control the productive capacity along the international border. Early in the war, the U.S. military prosecuted a property war against Indians and their British allies only within its own borders in order to assert national-state hegemony in Indian country. Because the Madison administration did not plan to annex Canada, the military abandoned the property war when it crossed the international border. Even before Hull invaded Canada in July 1812, he announced to the commander at Fort Malden that he was “not disposed to make war on Private Property,” a policy reinforced after the invasion with a proclamation stating that the United States promised to protect the “persons, property, and rights” of white Upper Canadians.138 This policy eroded as hardships of war wore thin the patience of commanders and policymakers alike. Reports of imperial and Indian offenses against American property fueled the devolution of restraint. Small American militias and locally organized vigilante parties plundered communities north of Lake Erie as much as they scouted British forces, and at least some of the attacks on property reflected personal prewar feuds.139 Alan Taylor characterizes the escalating violence as a manifestation of civil war in the porous borderlands as the republic and the British Empire fought for control of Upper Canada.140 Yet as much as the war provided a theater for provincial disputes, it also created an opportunity to define and control the bordered land. Although American forces increasingly confiscated and destroyed Upper Canadian crops and property, officers justified such actions as measures designed to achieve political goals of the war, not to extend national authority there.141 Ordered raids of Canadian households seeking public property might spill over into illicit looting by individuals, but the energies of the federal army also could be directed to advance national war aims by destroying the productive capacity of Upper Canada. When American troops recaptured Detroit and again moved into Upper Canada in September 1813, their interest in Canadian property remained largely limited to crops for victualling the military, which were purchased from willing residents. One year later commanders abandoned the practice of compensation, instead issuing orders to “consume all that remained that was not absolutely necessary for the subsistence of the Inhabitants” and William Hull to Lieut. Col. St. George, July 6, 1812, A Proclamation by William Hull, Brigadier General and Commander of the North Western Army of the United States, July 13, 1812 (original emphasis), MPHC, 15: 96, 106; William Eustis to William Henry Harrison, October 12, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 188. 139 George Sheppard, Plunder, Profit, and Paroles: A Social History of the War of 1812 in Upper Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 92–3. 140 Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (New York: Knopf, 2010). 141 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, December 12, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 240; Resolutions adopted by certain residents of Detroit, Citizens of the United States, February 1, 1813, MPHC, 15: 241–2. 138

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“destroy the remainder.”142 Near Niagara, American forces burned mills, appropriated cattle, and destroyed other property in nearby hamlets during the spring of 1814.143 Historian George Sheppard calculates the damage to have been in the hundreds of thousands of pounds currency, with the Niagara District and the Western District respectively experiencing the highest and second highest total and per capita damage.144 British commanders reeled at the escalation of the property war.145 Outraged at the “wanton destruction of private property,” Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane authorized “retaliation” for the “unnatural system of warfare.”146 Later analysis suggested that witnesses exaggerated some of the property damage, but adjusted reports did little to lighten the acerbic reality of wounded fortunes along the bordered land. With the exceptions of areas near Detroit and Niagara, the ravages of war did not penetrate to major production centers in the American West. Ohio Valley commerce continued without meaningful threat of invasion or disruption. As during the 1790s, federal wartime expenditures rippled through the region’s economy, but this time Ohio Valleyans could provide broader material support to the military effort. William Henry Harrison became an important vector for government spending when he received “carte blanche on the resources of the country, both as to men and money” early in the war. After April 1813, “admonitions of the Treasury” made it “inexpedient to continue to this authority its original latitude,” at which point the whole military budget could not exceed a healthy $1,400,000 per month.147 Not surprising, federal purchases tended to followed similar patters from the 1790s. Crops largely came from farms in Kentucky and southern Ohio, but yeomen in Indiana and Michigan (when it was in possession of the United States) also contributed to provisional support of military and militias.148 Livestock and forage funneled to the military from across the region.149 Pastures and settlements in the William Henry Harrison to John Armstrong, Jr., January 23, 1814, folder 7 box 2, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, 1791–1864, IHS; Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 263. 143 Winfield Scott to Jacob Jennings Brown, May 22, 1814, vol. 1799–1814, Jacob Brown Papers, WLC; P. Riall to the Officer Commanding at Presque Isle, June 9, 1814, MPHC, 15: 592. 144 Sheppard provides more detailed statistics, which I do not exhibit here because they include damage resulting from British and enemy forces. Sheppard, Plunder, Profit, and Paroles, 101, 123–8. 145 George Provost to Gordon Drummond, June 1, 1814, MPHC, 25: 580–1. 146 Alexander Cochrane to John W. Croker, July 18, 1814, Memorandum of Vice Admiral Sir. A. Cochrane, July 18, 1814, and George Provost to Earl Bathurst, December 20, 1814 (quote), MPHC, 25: 586, 587, 615. 147 John Armstrong, Jr. to William Henry Harrison, April 27, 1813, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 428. 148 James Rhea to Return J. Meigs, Jr., August 21, 1812, folder 8, box 1, Return J. Meigs, Jr. Collection, OHS; William Henry Harrison to James Winchester, September 19, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 140; William McIntosh to John Gibson, September 25, 1812, John Gibson Letters, ISL. 149 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, November 15, 1812, and William Henry Harrison to John Armstrong, Jr., March 30, 1813, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 212–3, 409; James Washington Bryson receipted bill, January 18, 1812, box 1, War of 1812 Papers, LL; 142

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Connecticut Reserve – because of high demand and proximity to two fronts in the war in Upper Canada – became husbandry and food processing sites fulfilling orders for beef, pork, and bacon rations.150 Owners of oxen and horses rented their work animals, often for elevated rates, knowing they would be paid despite complaints by commanders.151 By 1813, merchants and entrepreneurs as far away as Virginia gauged fluctuations in the regional supply of cattle with many reaping “a handsome profit.”152 American efforts to retain control of Detroit and to preserve Upper Canadian property rights early in the war increased military dependence on western settlements. During the spring of 1812, Secretary of War William Eustis supplemented Ohio state initiatives to fortify the northern frontier with militia to improve security of federal supply lines to Detroit.153 “This Army now wholly depends on the State of Ohio for subsistence,” William Hull reminded Ohio governor Return J. Meigs, Jr. just days before surrendering the city.154 Hull’s defeat, while cutting off Michigan territorial settlements from the American supply network, did not diminish the importance of the West to the military endeavor. The scope of campaigns was far beyond that undertaken by Wayne in 1794. Federal contracts now called for rations in order of millions, not the hundreds of thousands.155 Such large orders surpassed the productive capacity of any single or consolidated group of producers, meaning that federal money was distributed widely across the region. One month after the United States declared war against Britain, an observer in Cincinnati remarked that “nearly all the mills between the Miamies [sic]” had contracts with the government or one of its agents.156 By the end of October, Harrison claimed that orders for rations had been distributed to “every manufacturing Mill from the Scioto to Pittsburgh” seeking a contract.157 Regional manufacturers, whose contributions during Wayne’s campaign had been slight, contributed meaningfully to the war effort. Control of the William Henry Harrison to James Monroe, January 15, 1813, folder 1, box 2, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, 1791–1864, IHS. 150 Colonel F. Battersby to Colonel Baynes, July 31, 1813, MPHC, 15: 344; William Henry Harrison to Peter G. Voorhies, August 18, 1813, and Aaron Greely to William Henry Harrison, August 25, 1813, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 525, 526; William Henry Harrison to James Monroe, January 15, 1813, folder 5, box 2, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, 1791–1864, IHS. 151 B. Gardiner to H. Northup, March 10, 1814, folder 6, box 2, Arthur G. Mitten Collection, IHS. 152 William Vaun to E. Cutler, March 14, 1813, War of 1812 Documents, OHS. 153 Edmund Munger to Return J. Meigs, Jr., May 14, 1812, folder 4, box 1 Return J. Meigs, Jr. Collection, OHS; William Eustis to Return J. Meigs, April 15, 1812, Meigs Papers, LL. 154 William Hull to Return J. Meigs, Jr., August 12, 1812, Meigs Papers, LL. 155 William Henry Harrison to Thomas Buford, October 24, 1812, folder 23, box 1, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, 1791–1864, IHS. 156 D. C. Wallace to Return J. Meigs, Jr., July 8, 1812, folder 5, box 1, Return J. Meigs, Jr. Collection, OHS. 157 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, October 22, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 182–3.

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Great Lakes required a navy to cruise the inland seas. Shipyards in Presque Isle (Erie) and Cleveland constructed naval and transportation vessels funded by the national treasury, while additional money went to shipbuilders along the Ohio River.158 Although eastern manufacturers remained a main source for clothes, blankets, tents, canteens, and hospital and medical stores, quartermasters commonly turned to Ohio Valley communities for these items as well.159 Limited capital resources  – compared to eastern manufacturers  – restricted production capacity and represented a substantial obstacle for individuals seeking larger contracts with the Quartermaster’s Department. Nevertheless, commanders and regional quartermaster requisition agents called first upon western manufacturers to fill late, incomplete, and damaged orders.160 The expanding cottage industries prompted the Quartermaster’s Department to hire inspectors to ensure minimum quality standards for federal purchases.161 Given the languid western economy under the Embargo and NonImportation Acts, wartime spending must have been a conspicuous stimulus. Seeking improved opportunities, settlers living north of the Ohio River moved to Kentucky.162 At least some observers who described frontier settlers fleeing south of the Ohio witnessed not wartime dislocations but rather economic migrations. Springfield, Ohio resident John Lingle embodied the spirit of this emigration when he requested that Governor Meigs exempt him from military service so he could go to Kentucky to start a saltpeter business with his brother. “I presume,” he asserted, “that I can do infinately [sic] more good to government at powdermaking than any service besides that.” To strengthen his claim he admitted his intent to obtain a lucrative government “ingagement [sic].”163 The shifting geography of labor consternated farmers, entrepreneurs, and commanders alike. High demand for labor elevated wages, which drew men away from military service at times when they were most needed.164 When militia and military service further limited the pool of laborers, western employers John Armstrong, Jr., to William Henry Harrison, March 5, 1813, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 379; Waller Taylor to John C. Short, March 13, 1813, Waller Taylor Papers, ISL; William Henry Harrison to William Piatt, November 11, 1812, box 4, War of 1812 Papers, LL. 159 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, August 18, 1812, and William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, September 27, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 89, 157; William Eustis to Return J. Meigs, Jr., September 23, 1812, Meigs Papers, LL; Account due to Charles L’Hommedieu by the United States, April 9, 1812, folder 2, and Account to R. Allison, by the United States, June 6, 1812, folder 3, box 2, Arthur G. Mitten Collection, IHS. 160 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, August 18, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 89; William Eustis to Thomas Buford, November 14, 1812, box 4, War of 1812 Papers, LL. 161 James Taylor to William Eustis, December 8, 1811, folder 2, box 2, Arthur G. Mitten Collection, IHS. 162 Charles Mehl to Martin Mehl, February 10, 1812, Tippecanoe County File, ISL. 163 John Lingle to Return J. Meigs, Jr., February 8, 1813, folder 5, box 2, Return J. Meigs, Jr. Collection, OHS. 164 James Brown to Benjamin Parker, January 4, 1813, folder 11, box 2, Albert G. Porter Papers, IHS. 158

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cried foul as they saw labor costs increase. Farmers especially resented being called away to militia service during spring planting and fall harvests.165 In a tight labor market, the coincidents of security and production went hand in hand, uncomfortably at times. Most wartime goods purchased by the government channelled through the Quartermaster’s Department. While this might be expected, Congress and the Department of War had recently experimented with a number of structural changes to improve costs and efficiency, including dissolution of that department. Only three months prior to the declaration of war, Congress altered its trajectory and resurrected the Quartermaster’s Department. Together, vague language outlining responsibilities of the department’s component branches and the hasty organization of the bureaucratic apparatus engendered ­rampant confusion over the chain of command. Periodically throughout the war, Congress and the Quartermaster’s Department attempted to remedy the problems with mixed results.166 These well-known bureaucratic entanglements did not stop western commanders from continuing to pin supply disruptions and shortfalls on the character of contractors and subcontractors.167 In addition to institutional confusion, a constellation of obstacles could coalesce to thwart even the most diligent contractor. Wartime exigencies disrupted production, accumulation, and transportation of stocks. Larger supply contracts resulted in more complicated networks of subcontractors who performed as inconsistently as their employers. Merchants and farmers withheld crops, speculating on higher prices in the future. Hazardous roads, rivers, and weather likewise perpetually threatened cargos. Myopic commanders cared little for excuses – or reasons – especially when resources seemed abundant throughout the countryside. From his encampment along the Maumee River, Brigadier General James Winchester struggled to comprehend how the movements of the army had become “paralised” for months for want of supplies when they were within 100 miles of “the settlements of the state of Ohio” and 300 from “the heart of Kentucky abounding with provisions of Every Kind as well as means of transportation.”168 Fortuitously located regional merchants and farmers lugged their surpluses to the grounded soldiery, pocketing handsome profits for their timely supplementation.169 Petition of Portage County residents to Governor Meigs, April 26, 1813, folder 8, box 2, Return J. Meigs, Jr. Collection, OHS. 166 Erna Risch, Quartermaster Support of the Army: A History of the Corps, 1775–1939 (Washington, DC: Quartermaster Historian’s Office, Office of the Quartermaster General, 1962), 117, 123, 130–1, 136, 141, 143, 168. 167 William Henry Harrison to James Monroe, December 12, 1812, Governors Messages and Letters, 2: 243. 168 James Winchester to James Morrison, December 2, 1812, James Winchester Dispatch Book, box 3, War of 1812 Papers, LL. 169 William Henry Harrison to John Armstrong, Jr., January 23, 1814, folder 6, box 2, William Henry Harrison Papers and Documents, 1791–1864, IHS; John S. Gano to William Henry Harrison, January 27, 1814, Am. St. Pap., Mil. Af., 1: 657. 165

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Smaller merchants filled gaps but the burden of wartime supply ultimately fell to general contractors. By the time the United States initiated its invasion of Canada in September 1813, contractors, agents, and commanders had spent months accumulating the necessary materials. Yet few commanders expected that established supply lines could adequately support the troops once they entered Upper Canada. Once there they planned to rely on Upper Canadian agricultural resources by selling confiscated British provisions to the contractors and their agents “for the best price that can be obtained” with the caveat that “every pound” was for “the use of the army” and “no other purpose.”170 Issued proclamations informed Upper Canadians that the U.S. military would pay for flour, wheat, and oats, and prescribed that surplus commodities be sold only to the United States. Anyone who withheld such supplies or destroyed collected stores by “secret or clandestine measures” would be “severely punished,” officials warned.171 Meager supplies made their way to the invading army. Some Upper Canadians drew on Loyalist sentiments as a rationale to withhold provisions. Others refused to cooperate, fearing that an American victory might lead to the annexation of Canada, which would limit their ability to trade with Britain.172 The Quartermaster’s Department therefore continued to convey large amounts of provisions through Detroit. Reports that the American military was on “short allowances of provisions” during the winter of 1814 surprised few British military personnel. They had been a principal source of wartime pressure placed on local production.173 During the first year of the war, Canadian merchants scoured farms for provisions in anticipation of increased prices and profits.174 By late summer 1813, the heavily burdened agricultural and fiscal sectors lumbered to meet demands of Upper Canadian forces. British major general Henry Proctor blamed “exhausted resources in the country, limited hard money and the poor local credit of the British government that summer for a depletion of military and Indian agency supplies.175 “I have neither Salt Pork nor Salt and but little Flour,” Proctor explained to George Prevost, commander of British forces in North America. “[M]y Rear must be open to supplies,” he continued, “or I must fall from the want of Provisions alone.”176 William Hull to James Taylor, July 10, 1812, box 2, War of 1812 Papers, LL. Proclamation by John Miller Esquire, Colonel of the 17th Regiment United States Infantry Military & Civil Commandment of that district of Upper Canada which is above the Round O, or Lake Erie, November 5, 1814, MPHC, 15: 661–2. 172 Pratt, Expansionists of 1812, 175. 173 Sheppard, Plunder, Profit, and Paroles, chap. 6; Thomas Talbot to Colonel Harvey, December 7, 1814, MPHC, 15: 581. 174 T. B. St. George to unknown, March 10, 1812, MPHC, 15: 82; Charles Askin to John Askin, March 8, 1813, John Askin Papers, 2: 751. 175 Henry Proctor to Noah Freer, September 3, 1813, Henry Proctor to Noah Freer, September 6, 1813, Unknown to Henry Proctor, September 23, 1813, and Gordon Drummond to George Prevost, March 5, 1814, MPHC, 15: 370, 371–2, 384, 503. 176 Henry Proctor to George Prevost, September 21, 1813, MPHC, 25: 529. 170 171

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Although Proctor found himself in a tight spot, American and Canadian commanders sometimes exaggerated claims of resource exhaustion in Upper Canada. Poor government credit, bitter sentiments resulting from Indian and military pillaging of livestock and crops, and selfish profit-driven considerations shaped Canadian inhabitants’ decisions not to enter the martial marketplace.177 As with so many other phenomena of war, commodity depletions occurred unevenly. The inhabitants of York maintained a surplus of beef and flour even after the first occupation and plundering by the United States during the summer of 1813.178 British forces at Mackinac had a very different experience. When American invasions to the south cut off supply lines, trade with area Indian communities help sustain imperial possession of the fort.179 As U.S. forces established stronger footholds on both ends of Lake Erie during 1814, their British counterparts in Upper Canada placed greater weight on the supply network with Lower Canada, viewing it as vital for military survival. Napoleon’s defeat in April raised spirits and prospects for reinforcements, but did not alter the structural problems plaguing supply lines in the colony.180 The limited financial infrastructure in the West likewise contributed to hardships of supply and soldiery. In the early months of the war, western banks and merchants extended credit to state and federal agents, expecting that the Treasury would reimburse such expenditures.181 But by August, the credit structure that propped up regional commerce began to tighten. Merchants and banks relied upon transfers of credit for substantial purchases rather than employ scarce specie. This practice facilitated exchange, especially over larger distances, by reducing costs and risks associated with transferring specie. The system functioned efficiently when participating individuals believed that hard currency backing the transactions existed somewhere within the latticework of credit. As mobilization ramped up, the credit network became more complex as state and federal governments became influential clients to banks, as new agents entered the system acting on behalf of those governments and the volume and size of transactions increased. A freshet of eastern bank notes entered the western commercial system, adding to the problem by driving down their previously high value. Credit holders responded to the enhanced risk by curtailing credit just when state and federal agents needed it most. Rather than accept bills payable on the Gordon Drummond to George Prevost, March 5, 1814, MPHC, 15: 504. Taylor frames the problems of supply as bound up in an overlapping set of civil wars in the borderland. Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 291–2. 178 William Dummer Powell to George Prevost, June 28, 1813, MPHC, 15: 324. 179 Richard Bullock to Noah Freer, February 26, 1814, MPHC, 15: 496. 180 Gordon Drummond to George Prevost, March 11, 1814, Gordon Drummond to George Prevost, April 14, 1814, and Earl Bathurst to George Prevost, April 24, 1814, MPHC, 15: 512, 536, 538. 181 Return J. Meigs, Jr. General Orders, August 18, 1812, Meigs Papers, LL; Robert Brent to James T. Eubank, August n.d., 1812, box 3, War of 1812 Papers, LL. 177

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government, merchants demanded specie payments.182 “Hitherto remittances to this country from the Eastward have been made with the utmost facility by the sale of Bills drawn here on Individuals or on Banks in consequence of Deposits for that purpose,” one Lexington resident wrote two months after the declaration of war. “But at present,” he continued, “an unprecedented state of things exists. No Bill on the Eastward can be sold even at a loss, tho’ formerly they commanded a premium.”183 The credit crunch had practical consequences beyond the interests of requisition agents. Within days of marching from Gallia County, Ohio in August 1812, volunteer Nathan Newsome recounted how “we were first embarrassed in the pecuniary way, and our officers borrowed money to a considerable amount at Chillicothe at an exhorbitant [sic] rate of interest.”184 While patriotic eulogies of martial manliness might inspire courage among militia participants, they did not supersede the expectations of volunteers that they be paid for their service, leaving some commanders in an “awkward situation” when their men discovered they might not be. “[T]hey cannot and will not march without money,” John Stites Gano bellowed from Cincinnati.185 Elijah Wadsworth cut to the quick of the problem. It “is almost impossible to organize & keep together a force without money.”186 If the political winds had been different, the Treasury Department might have been in a better position to marshal national resources to improve lines of credit. Since its chartering in 1791, critics railed against the Hamiltonian Bank of the United States as undemocratic, unconstitutional, anti-agrarian, monopolistic, and rife with foreign interests.187 When Congress debated rechartering the bank in January 1811, Republicans mustered the votes necessary to narrowly defeat the measure. Consequently, financing the war became far more complicated. Without the Bank of the United States, the Treasury needed to work with state and private banks that served as intermediaries of public funds. The Bank of Columbia and the Bank of Alexandria, both located along the Potomac, had taken on many attributes of the Bank of the United States in the wake of its closure. Yet neither individually nor collectively did they possess sufficient Samuel Hawkins to Return J. Meigs, Jr., May 12, 1812, folder 4, box 1, Return J. Meigs, Jr. Collection, OHS. 183 He continued, noting that western “Banks have also refused to take Eastern Bank notes and it is doubtful whether merchants will receive them even at a discount.” John T. Mason to Charles Fenton Mercier, August 13, 1812, box 3, War of 1812 Papers, LL. 184 August 12, 1812, in Nathan Newsome, “A short summary of a journey taken by Volunteers from Gallia County; for the purpose of destroying Indians and the Invasion of Canada,” OHS. 185 John Stites Gano to James T. Eubank or Thomas D. Carneal, August 17, 1812, box 3, War of 1812 Papers, LL (original emphasis). 186 Elijah Wadsworth to Return Meigs, Jr., September 8, 1812, folder 10, box 1, Return J. Meigs, Jr. Collection, OHS. 187 David Jack Cowen, The Origins and Economic Impact of the First Bank of the United States, 1791–1797 (New York: Garland, 2000); Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 214–22. 182

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institutional weight or reach to equal that of their predecessor. Although these banks remained important, they and others had to create new partnerships with the federal government to finance the war. Fortunately, the Treasury had constructed agreements with other institutions prior the dissolution of the Bank of the United States. In addition to Bank of the United States branch offices in Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, several state-chartered banks held federal deposits. Most of these banks were in the East and housed customs receipts, but when Ohio and Kentucky legislatures chartered their own state banks during the first decade of the nineteenth century, the Treasury contracted with some of them to hold land office deposits.188 The Bank of Kentucky (Frankfort), chartered in 1806, the Miami Exporting Company (Cincinnati, 1803), and the Bank of Chillicothe (1808), each received federal deposits from western land offices and tax collector funds.189 By entrusting western banks in this way, the Treasury reduced risks associated with frequently transporting land office deposits across the Appalachians. On their end, banks profited by issuing loans on the deposits, which they held for about six months, while also gaining legitimacy in the eyes of commercially minded westerners because they held public money.190 As long as peace reigned, money flowed relatively smoothly, as federal deposits were issued to westerners as three-month loans. When war began, federal deposits could not be accessed substantially until loans were repaid, contributing to the credit crunch. It took months for banks and the Treasury to arrive at new accords. Ultimately, state banks were not capable of acting efficiently as the fiscal agents of the federal government, which had been the primary purpose of the Bank of the United States.191 Western bank presidents, through detailed negotiations with Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, worked to elaborate on initial depository relationships at the beginning of the war. The new agreements allowed quartermasters, militia commanders, and certain agents of the federal government to withdraw funds from Treasury accounts and to obtain loans. Because land sales continued throughout the war, these receipts supplemented periodic Treasury deposits Albert Gallatin to the House of Representatives, December 19, 1806 and January 13, 1812, Am St. Pap., Fin., 2: 217, 218, 517. 189 For instance, the Bank of Pennsylvania had a branch office in Pittsburgh that also held federal deposits. Statement of Moneys received into the Treasury during the year 1813, for Treasury Notes, bearing interest, at the rate of 5 2/5 per cent. Per annum, Am St. Pap., Fin., 2: 661; Basil Wilson Duke, History of the Bank of the Kentucky (Ayer Publishing, 1980), 14; C. C. Huntington, “A History of Banking and Currency in Ohio before the Civil War,” Ohio Archeological and Historical Quarterly, vol. 24 (July 1915), 258, 261. 190 William Eustis to Thomas Buford, August 29, 1812, box 3, War of 1812 Papers, LL. 191 Jefferson only reluctantly authorized a branch bank of the BUS in New Orleans on the recommendation of Albert Gallatin. Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, 207. See also, James O. Wettereau, “The Branches of the First Bank of the United States,” Journal of Economic History, vol. 2, supplement (Dec. 1942), 87–8; Act of March 23, 1804, ch. 32, 2 Stat., 274. 188

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from the East.192 Thusly, receipts from land sales in Indiana Territory, deemed controversial by Indians north of the Ohio, helped support the war to guarantee those lands to white settlers and assert national-state authority in the West. At the Bank of Kentucky, the Treasury’s account varied greatly during the war from a high of $237,914 on December 14, 1812 to a low of $9,042 on May 20, 1814, with a mean deposit of $77,984.193 Quartermasters, paymasters, army officers, and militia commanders, among others, withdrew tens of thousands of dollars worth of bank bills at a given time, though smaller sums were common as well. New contracts defining how Treasury accounts could be used, coupled with improved clarity from Congress about how the war would be financed, relaxed the regional credit network by the beginning of 1813.194 Nationally, sustained credit to support the war rested on the financial solvency of the United States. By 1814 Congress struggled to pay for the war. Even worse, Napoleon’s defeat in April 1814 offered Britain an opportunity to allocate more financial and military resources to the North American conflict. When British troops burned Washington, DC in August, banks in eastern states suspended specie payments with western banks following suit at the end of the year.195 Although many banks continued to issue dividends in paper currency, state banks began to question the value of federal notes and limited credit issued to the national state.196 Although Congress passed a number of levies during the war, none generated the revenue lost by the suspension of trade with Britain and France. In November 1814, Congress authorized the president to obtain a loan of three million dollars.197 By then some financiers doubted the solvency of the United States. “How long the Banks will keep their Legs is a questionable point,” exclaimed one prominent Virginian. “Credit rests now not on public confidence, but on public necessity.”198 Not until winter 1817 did banks resume specie payments, years after the conflict subsided. Statement of the Lands sold in the Districts of Marietta, Zanesville, Steubenville, Canton, Chillicothe, Cincinnati, Jeffersonville, and Vincennes, from 1st October, 1812, to 30th September, 1813; showing, also, the receipts from individuals, and payments made by Receivers, during the same time, with the balance due, both on the 1st of October, 1812, and 1st October, 1813, Am. St. Pap., Fin., 2: 657. 193 The mean deposit uses balances from the start of the war through the end of 1814, when western banks suspended specie payments. Report Books C and D (principal bank), Records of the Bank of Kentucky, Kentucky Department for Library and Archives (hereafter KDLA), Frankfort, Kentucky. 194 H. Harbaugh to Return J. Meigs, January 1, 1813, folder 4, box 2, Return J. Meigs, Jr. Collection, OHS; Act of June 30, 1812, ch. 111, 2 Stat., 766–7. 195 Robert Alexander to Alexander Dallas, October 15, 1814, Letter Book C, Records of the Bank of Kentucky, KDLA; December 30, 1814, Minute Book A of the Bank of Kentucky, Lexington Branch Bank, 1808–16, Records of the Bank of Kentucky, KDLA. 196 Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, 227–8; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 426–7. 197 Act of November 15, 1814, ch. 4, 3 Stat., 144–5. 198 Francis Corbin to William Lorman, August 4, 1814, box 7, War of 1812 Papers, LL. 192

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Fortunately for the national state, the war ended quickly. On December 24, 1814, diplomats signed the Treaty of Ghent, two weeks before Andrew Jackson’s celebrated victory at the Battle of New Orleans. For Indians living north of the Ohio River, most of their war hopes faded a year earlier. Indian skeptics of British commitment before the war saw their concerns realized as it became clear that they and their imperial partners had divergent goals. While Tecumseh and his allies pressed for an offensive strategy to capture territory for Indians, British commanders crafted a defensive one to preserve control of Canada.199 By December of 1812, Tecumseh’s warriors and a large contingent of their families retreated to Amherstburg because they lacked sufficient food to support themselves. By 1813, persistent supply problems, poor leadership, and failed efforts to regain the northern Ohio country prompted Tecumseh and other confederacy leaders to suspect the resolve of their British partners. After a hard summer near Amherstburg, the American military advanced from Detroit and pushed a retreating British and Native American army, along with their families, up the Thames River. On October 5, the two sides met on the battlefield. By the end of the day, Tecumseh had been killed, an event that worked to unravel the confederacy.200 The confederacy’s dissolution did not signal a reduction in animosities, but rather a practical assessment of the conflict. By demonstrating reluctance to secure Indian country, Britain again failed to act as a proper ally. So late in the growing season, many families returned to their hunting grounds for the winter. Even Main Poc, among the most virulent anti-American voices, reluctantly signed an armistice with the United States. Few American commanders put much faith in his promise, but still recognized the symbolism of the gesture. As in previous international treaties, the Treaty of Ghent excluded Native Americans from negotiations. In assessing the accord, scholars often remark that it failed to address any of the maritime issues that had contributed to the declaration of war. At the time, many anti-war Federalists used this fact in partisan arguments claiming that war had been fought for little purpose.201 But the end of both the Napoleonic War and American hostilities with Britain brought to an end many of the challenges that the American national state had faced. Britain no longer needed seamen, thereby eliminating the impressment crisis. The Orders in Council had been repealed in 1812, ending the British ­blockade of European ports and alleviating obstructions to American Atlantic trade. Parliament continued to restrict American ships from entering West Indies ­harbors, but lax enforcement and the opening of ports in Bermuda augured well for American commerce.202 Other than confirm U.S. sovereignty in the trans Sugden, Tecumseh, 312–13. Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet, 132, 141; Sugden, Tecumseh, 330. 201 Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 298. 202 F. Lee Benns, The American Struggle for the West India Carrying Trade, 1815–1830 (Bloomington: Indiana University Studies, vol. X, 1923), 29. 199 200

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Appalachian West, perhaps the most important, if modest, aspect of the Treaty of Ghent was that it rehabilitated the treaty process with Britain. Without a substantial military, treaties were critical instruments to resolve international conflicts and to assure open markets for American products. Crises facing the national state prior to the War of 1812 reached such dire levels because Britain refused to accede to a treaty that would mitigate tensions. For decades following the war, presidential administrations pursued additional pacts that tackled issues left unresolved by the Treaty of Ghent. Among the few issues the treaty resolved unquestionably was a procedure to lay out the international border between Canada and the United States. When negotiations began, British plenipotentiaries insisted upon creating an Indian buffer state between the United States and Canadian territories. American commissioners held firm that the federal government, not Britain, would determine Indian affairs in the West, and nearly walked away from negotiations altogether.203 Ultimately the treaty tacitly certified federal hegemony in the American West, lessening a perceived impediment to national-state authority there. British negotiators managed to include a clause preserving the possessions, rights, and privileges enjoyed by Indians prior to the war, but that did nothing to preclude future land cessions or inhibit the federal presence in Indian country. By surveying the boundary line, the United States and Britain also indicated that greater institutional regulation of the border would govern trade and population movement across it. While the Treaty of Ghent brought peace between the United States and Britain, war continued in the western lakes. Several bands of Fox and Sauk Indians, among them Black Hawk (Sauk), refused to acquiesce to American authority, even defying some of their own leadership who acknowledged an end to hostilities. From their settlement along Rock River, the warriors represented a real threat to Fort Madison’s supply network and a symbol of the limits of national state authority in the upper Mississippi Valley.204 Territorial governors of Missouri and Illinois, William Clark and Ninian Edwards, respectively, campaigned to quell the resistance. A negotiated peace in 1816 cleared the way for an expansion of federal installations in the western Great Lakes, including Fort Howard (now Green Bay, Wisconsin), Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin), and Fort Armstrong (Rock Island, Illinois), most with factories situated nearby. These institutions provided security to enforce American power in the region and police British traders attempting to access Indian trade in the upper Mississippi and Missouri river watersheds.205 The erection of these forts was coupled with the abandonment of older ones to the south and east where the fur trade had declined precipitously and Indian encroachments no longer were a source of distress to settlers. Horsman, War of 1812, 254–7. Hagen, Sac and Fox Indians, 77–80. 205 John C. Calhoun to Alexander Smyth, December 29, 1819, Am. St. Pap., Mil. Af., 2: 33. 203 204

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The proliferation of federal institutions west of the Great Lakes marked a shifting geography of national state authority. Just as in the Ohio country some twenty years earlier, federal and local interests melded through a military presence. Commercially minded settlers in Illinois and Missouri territories advocating for greater security found a willing national-state partner eager to assert federal sovereignty in Indian country. Distant northwestern forts prompted the construction of roads by military labor to facilitate the movement of supplies from markets in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and the East. Roads and economic opportunities associated with military installations attracted merchants and, in part, helped shape patterns of settlement. Federal institutions and an assertive white settler population worked together to shift economic power away from local Indian communities that controlled the area’s resources and dominated the regional economy.206 In this way the federal government became both a literal and figurative vanguard of expansionism. Far from a laissez-faire process or the product of either a disinterested or maladroit government, American western expansionism was led by a national state eager to secure its authority and assert its sovereignty. In the early West, federal institutions from the military to the post office became a means to counteract centrifugal forces associated with expansionism while jointly perpetuating the phenomenon through the acquisition of new territories. While these institutions often engendered great political debate, they also became national instruments that helped mold local economic development and encouraged westerners to interact, directly and indirectly, with an otherwise distant national government. Through partnerships with local businesses and state institutions, the federal government reduced costs, bureaucratically reached across the geographical expanse of its territories, and made state building a shared endeavor of people as well as government. By the end of the War of 1812, this approach had secured the Ohio Valley and the southern Great Lakes for the United States. Together, the federal government and white settlers shifted their gaze and investment to the upper Mississippi Valley and transMississippi West.

206

Francis Paul Prucha, Broadax and Bayonet: The Role of the United States Army in the Development of the Northwest, 1815–1860 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1953); Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, A Gathering of Rivers: Indians, Métis, and Mining in the Western Great Lakes, 1737–1832 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000). As American interests later turned to the western plains, there too wars and treaties resulted in the establishment of forts and supporting roads. Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 142–3, 239, 240, 277; Angela Pulley Hudson, Creek Paths and Federal Roads: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves and the Making of the American South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 172, 233n17.

Epilogue

“Let us conquer space,” famously declared John C. Calhoun from the floor of Congress in 1817. The South Carolinian anchored his exposition in the persistent problems of geography and expansionism faced by the national state. For him, western territories and settlements manifested both “our weakness and our strength.” Like others before him, he appealed to his fellow congressmen to pass legislation designed to bind the republic together under direction from the federal government. The proposal under debate on the House floor, the Bonus Bill, would use government dividend profits from the second Bank of the United States to establish a near-perpetual fund for road and canal construction.1 While financed uniquely, Calhoun’s vision to stitch the nation together with a national infrastructure system echoed plans articulated earlier by Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin. The Bonus Bill, unlike Gallatin’s report, offered no blueprint to follow, a point of contention for its opponents. Rather, states would submit their plans to Congress for specific appropriations in support of road and canal construction. Meditating on the federal government’s experiences during the War of 1812, the Democratic-Republican representative argued that insufficient interregional transportation networks placed national security at risk. Calhoun’s forceful argument plaited commerce, union, and national security into a feedback loop that would preserve the republic. “Whatever . . . impedes the intercourse of the extremes with this, the centre of the Republic, weakens the Union,” he explained. “The more enlarged the sphere of commercial circulation, the more extended that of social intercourse; the more strongly are we bound together; the more inseparable are our destinies.” Economic growth fostered by roads and canals would strengthen American sovereignty in the western borderlands and along the international borders to the north and south. While narrow projects 1

Annals of Congress, 14th cong., 2nd sess., 361, 854.

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would allocate government expenditures unevenly across the country, Calhoun admitted to critics, subsequent trade emanating from those corridors would distribute concentrations of wealth, thereby benefiting the region and nation. As a device for state building, the Bonus Bill was inspired by nearly thirty years of federal investment in economic development that partnered local communities and the national state. The legislation nevertheless met substantial resistance in Congress. States’ rights anti-consolidationists  – to employ John Larson’s descriptor  – often espoused support for the principle of internal improvement projects, but objected to federal orchestration or statutory restrictions on the use of distributed funds. Other opponents characterized the legislation as little more than a reservoir to support wasteful pork-barrel projects. Although Calhoun pointed to the general welfare and elastic clauses of the Constitution as sources of congressional authority for national infrastructure development, many peers disagreed with his interpretation. By a narrow two-vote margin, the bill passed the House while in the Senate strong support from western and mid-­Atlantic States, those most likely to benefit from the money, helped propel its passage.2 When James Madison vetoed the bill, denouncing it as unconstitutional, Calhoun and other supporters were astounded. The president had a long record of promoting infrastructure projects and had recently signed into law other pieces of nationalist legislation, including chartering the second Bank of the United States and a protective tariff.3 With his veto of the Bonus Bill, the federal government lost an opportunity to become a formative leader in creating a new generation of infrastructure projects in the postwar era. Instead, states increasingly shouldered the costs and risks of large-scale projects, most notably canals. After the War of 1812, Congress began to revise federal authority in Indian country by ending the factory system, a centerpiece of national-state institutional presence in unceded territories. While an assertive military presence remained a critical feature of national-state power, congressmen sought to abolish “the existing Indian trade establishments of the United States” in order to open trade “to individuals, under suitable regulations.”4 This shift in policy was truly remarkable given the enormous blame Americans placed on British agents for instigating the recent war and destabilizing the Great Lakes region since the 1780s. Post bellum diplomacy propelled this attitudinal swing. The Rush-Bagot Treaty in 1817 greatly reduced the British naval threat on the Great Lakes, and the Convention of 1818 defined the United States-Canadian border as the 49th Parallel. Both accords nurtured a sense of security in the Ibid., 191, 934. John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 63–9. 4 Alteration of the System for Trading with the Indians, Am. St. Pap., Ind. Af., 2: 181. 2 3

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Ohio Valley, as well as the rest of the country, even if they did little to quell Anglophobia.5 Privatizing Indian trade, therefore, signaled popular beliefs that the federal government could effectively exercise its authority along the international border, and that Britain represented a declining threat to the stability of the western borderlands. Perhaps no one lobbied more aggressively to transform the factory system than John Jacob Astor. After reorganizing the American Fur Company, he argued that Congress should abandon the public system in favor of private American traders, a key strategy if his firm were to compete with British counterparts. Building on regulatory statutes to limit the influence of foreign traders, Congress legislated an end to the public factory system in 1822.6 On the surface, with the failure of the Bonus Bill and the end of the factory system, the United States government appeared to usher in an era of states’ rights libertarianism. Yet, despite these noteworthy departures from previous policy, federal activities continued throughout much of the West. Through its variegated institutions, the national state exuded authority and fostered economic development. The end of the factory system did not leave the military as the only agent of the federal government in Indian country. Many institutions, including the Post Office, land office, customs service, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and later the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers, exercised national state power there during the nineteenth century.7 As Stephen Rockwell boldly initiates readers of his recent interpretive synthesis Indian Affairs and the Administrative State in the Nineteenth Century, “Big government won the West.”8 That West included settler territory where government institutions engendered conditions favorable for market capitalism during the nineteenth century. The Army Corps of Engineers and Topographical Engineers in particular provided critical support to commerce through many of its projects as engineers surveyed roads and coastal areas in the West, maintained harbors and built lighthouses to facilitate commerce along the Great Lakes, worked to improve navigation along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and explored for mineral deposits. Part of their efforts included information gathering through Sam W. Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010), 6, 15, 204–5. 6 Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, vol. I (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 130–4; W. Sheridan Warrick, “The American Indian Policy in the Upper Old Northwest following the War of 1812,” Ethnohistory, vol. 3 (Spring 1956), 109–25; Paul Chrisler Phillips, The Fur Trade, vol. II (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), 164–8; Act of May 6, 1822, ch. 54, 3 Stat., 679–80. 7 This list might also include Marine Hospitals. Ralph Chester Williams, The United States Public Health Service, 1798–1950 (Washington, DC: Commissioned Officers Association of the United States Public Health Service, 1951), 43–4; Gautham Rao, “Sailor’s Health and National Wealth: Marine Hospitals in the Early Republic,” Common-place (http://www.common-place.org/vol09/no-01/rao/) vol. 9 (October 2008). 8 Stephen J. Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1, 4. 5

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geodetic mapping, drawing pictures, gathering statistics, and writing reports, all of which not only expanded American scientific knowledge, but also was intended to promote settlement and commercial growth of the West.9 Soldiers likewise continued to provide security along the United States-Canadian border, which remained militarized until 1871. Occasional federally funded road building, especially along the international border, continued to demonstrate an American understanding that settlement, commerce, and security were coincidental factors.10 Much as they had done prior to 1815, federal institutions created wealth by assuming costs and risks in discovering and developing resources and infrastructure. Even canal projects, often celebrated as exemplars of state-directed internal improvement, benefited greatly from federal largess. Despite receiving statehood, the federal government remained a substantial landholder in western states like Ohio and Indiana. To generate revenue in support of canal construction in Ohio, Congress transferred half a million acres to the state in 1828. Although state authorities administered canal projects, persistent ­national-state investment in the future of the trans-Appalachian West became ­manifest through distributions of federal surpluses and stock purchases, as well as further land grants.11 Partnerships between federal institutions and state governments to enhance regional economic conditions bound the two in a union of interests that reified national-state sovereignty while preserving popular authority through local participation. However, during the nineteenth century, middle-class investors and entrepreneurs legitimated their political ascendency in municipal and state governments by celebrating their contributions to such infrastructure endeavors and minimizing that of the national state. Brian Balogh brings attention to this theme, contending that Americans embraced energetic government during the nineteenth century, but bristled over bureaucratic encroachments that challenged local and national partnerships.12 Since the nineteenth century, American social memory has largely evicted the federal government from the expansionist enterprise, especially for the transAppalachian West. Many contemporary Americans imagine that the founding Forest G. Hill, Roads, Rails & Waterways: The Army Engineers and Early Transportation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), 21–9; William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803–1863 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979; rpt. 1959), 4–12, 22, 57, 106. 10 C. P. Stacey, “The Myth of the Unguarded Frontier, 1815–1871,” AHR, vol. 56 (Oct. 1950), 6–7; Haynes, Unfinished Revolution, 208. 11 Erik F. Haites, James Mak, and Gary M. Walton, Western River Transportation: The Era of Early Internal Development, 1810–1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), ch. 7; Harry N. Scheiber, Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820–1861 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1969), 49, 98, 100, 108, 151; Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), ch. 5. 12 Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in NineteenthCentury America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 9

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fathers established a weak and disinterested national state, a ­libertarian republic begetting settler-driven expansionism and free market capitalism. This memory serves political needs in the present, but does not reflect historic reality. Few people today consider that the men who crafted the Constitution created a framework for a strong national government made muscular by its authority to collect revenue and wield a military. The Ohio Valley became an early testing ground for federal institutional authority, which tangled with disaffected Indians and settlers, as well as competing empires. The success of the national government in overcoming potentially disintegrative forces proceeded from marrying national security with regional economic interests. Although expansionism remained rife with obstacles, over time, national-state sovereignty ­proceeded most effectively where local institutions worked with its institutions. The federal government’s experiences in the Ohio Valley produced a model to foster an expansive union, one rooted in partnerships with the states and local businesses.

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Index

Adams, John, 180 Allen, Ebenezer, 110–11 American Revolution, 54, 59, 62 Armstrong, John, 27, 28–9, 136 Army Corps of Engineers. See U. S. Army Corps of Engineers Articles of Confederation, 2–3, 34, 40, 41 Askin, John, 60, 64–5, 137, 145–6, 200; armed trading posts, 98; Greenville treaty, 113; land purchase, 110–11 Askin, John, Jr., 110–11; arrested by U. S. military, 113; at Fallen Timbers, 96, 113 Astor, John Jacob, 189, 255 Au-si-me-the, 124 Baby family, 110 Baby, James, 98 Badger, Joseph, 195, 200 Banditti, 26–7, 29–30 Bank of the United States, 247 Banks, 247–8; suspend specie payments, 249 Barbary States, 226 Beata, 222–3 Beaver, The, 234 Berlin Decree, 227, 228 Bissell, Russell, 139 Black Hoof, 217, 218, 224; accommodationist, 193; annuities, 197; and missionaries, 195–7; threatened, 226, 233 Blackhawk, 232, 251 Blacksnake, 226

Blue Jacket, 43, 44, 46, 50, 86, 87, 88, 101, 121, 123, 124, 126, 193–4; peace advocate, 103–4, 120 Bois Blanc, Isle aux, 144 Bonus Bill, 253–4 Boone, Daniel, 17 Bosseron, Francois, 60 Brant, Joseph, 76; endorses the confederacy, 102, 115, 120 Britain: authority in colonies, 19–21; the frontier and, 18, 60, 108, 140; land cessions and, 177; policies toward Indians, 61, 88–9, 102–3, 110, 128, 176–7, 229–30, 237; policies toward the U. S., 61, 89; presents to Indians, 81; Treaty of Ghent, 251; war with France, 89. See also Napoleonic wars; Upper Canada; War of 1812 Buckongahelas, 50, 75, 86, 87, 90, 101, 223 Burke, Edmund, 107 Calhoun, John C., 253–4 Canals, 149, 186, 206, 256 Captain Crow, 173 Captain Johnny, 23, 48, 120 Captain Reed, 112 Captain Will, 17 Carleton, Guy (Lord Dorchester), 59, 61, 108, 110 Cartwright, Richard, 70 Castlereagh, Lord. See Stewart, Robert Cavendish-Bentinck, William (Duke of Portland), 139, 221

281

282 Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, 227–8 Chew, Joseph, 100 Cincinnati, 65, 71, 104, 136–7; assaults on Choctaw warriors, 115; bounties for scalps, 82; entertainments in, 58 Civilization programs, 174, 183–4, 194–5; failure of, 198; Indians employ whites, 198; scholarly treatment of, 196; support from westerners, 195–6. See also individual missionaries Clark, George Rogers, 34, 35; filibuster against Spain, 84, 85 Clark, William, 251. See also Lewis and Clark expedition Claus, William, 237 Cochenawaga, 76 Cochrane, Alexander, 241 Connecticut Reserve, 217, 241–2 Constitution, 3, 5, 40–1, 254 Cornstalk, 19, 23 Cox, Zachariah, 207–8 Coxe, Tench, 5 Craig, James, 229, 230 Davidson, Alexander, 64 Davis, Augustine, 159 Dayton, Jonathan, 129 Dearborn, Henry, 186, 189, 193, 198, 209; crime and the border, 199; on Indian confederacies, 221 Democratic Republicans, 82, 83, 155, 161, 253 Dennis, Philip, 194–5, 196 Detroit: Indian council at, 102–4, 111 Dorchester, Lord. See Carleton, Guy Ducoigne, Jean Baptiste, 216 Dundas, Henry, 60–1 Dunmore, Lord. See Murray, John Dunmore’s War, 19 Economy: conflict about, 29–30, 64–5, 66; during War of 1812, 241; early, 21–3; economic migrations, 243; in 1810, 169–71; embargo effects, 228; financial infrastructure of, 246–9; labor, 56–7, 243–4; limits of, 63; manufacturing, 242–3; Mississippi River and, 83; war and, 57, 71, 85; western U. S., 6–7. See also Internal improvements; Settlers, Upper Canada; Settlers, western U. S.; U. S. military Edwards, Ninian, 210, 219, 235, 251; search for mineral resources, 202 Egusheway, 101, 111, 120–1, 123

Index Elliot and Williams, 65, 66, 82, 84, 91–2; critique of, 73–4, 91. See also Elliot, Robert; Williams, Elie Elliot, Matthew, 60, 61, 99, 100, 238; corruption, 176–7; meets with confederacy, 102 Elliot, Robert, 84; killed, 91. See also Elliot and Williams Embargo Act (1807), 140, 228, 231 England, Richard G., 85, 87–8, 88–9, 98, 99, 100, 108–9, 110, 128, 142, 145 Eustis, William, 195, 235, 242 Factory system: at Chicago, 187; at Detroit, 186, 187; establishment of, 182, 185; at Fort Wayne, 186–7, 188, 211, 238; goals of, 184–5; Indian attitudes toward, 186–7; Indian debt, 184–5, 188; at Kaskaskia, 187; at Mackinac, 187, 188, 192; military and, 183, 185–6, 191; operation of, 183, 184, 185; at Prairie du Chien, 230, 232; at Sandusky, 187; scholarly treatment of, 172; southern, 185, 189; supply of, 186, 191; termination of, 254–5; white debt at, 188–9 Fallen Timbers, 88, 89; Battle of, 90, 92, 94, 96, 101, 103; theatrical rendition of, 126 Federalists, 5, 83, 89, 132, 155, 161, 250 Feed fights. See Property war Ferries, 146, 151; licensing, 152 Filibusters, 84, 85, 170 Five Medals, 196, 197, 234; accommodation, 193–4 Flies, Hessian, 109, 141 Forts and posts, 78, 130; Adams, 88, 133; Amherstburg, 146; Armstrong, 251; Chicago, 133, 186, 192; Clark, 231; communication between, 114; Crawford, 251; —Defiance, 91, 95, 98, 103, 104, 105, 113, 127, 137, 173, 174, 175, 176; constructed, 89; Indians at, 103, 111–2, 113, 127; make sugar with Shawnee, 111–12; Red Pole attempts to burn, 127; trade with Canadians, 106, 108; Detroit, 62, 108, 109, 142, 143, 144, 181, 185, 192, 241; difficulty supplying, 104–5; Erie, 109; —Greenville, 63, 71, 80, 81, 86, 88, 89, 92, 105, 111, 113, 134, 136; constructed, 79; Indians at, 103–4, 112, 115; Hamilton, 48, 68, 72, 115; handover of British, 143–5, 174; Howard, 251; Industry, 104; Jefferson, 72, 77, 79, 89, 113, 134, 173; Mackinac. See Michilimackinac; Madison, 203,

Index 232, 251; Massac, 133; McIntosh, 27; —Miami, 81, 82, 89, 90, 92, 98, 100, 102, 142, 143, 144, 174; attempts to control border trade, 108; Michilimackinac, 70, 108, 133, 143, 151, 181, 186; Niagara, 62, 108, 143, 144, 181, 241; Ontario, 144; Oswego, 139, 143; Presque Isle, 138–9, 192; productive cycle of, 105; —Recovery, 82, 89; siege of, 86; Schlosser, 138; St. Clair, 72; St. Joseph, 144, 188; Washington, 48, 58, 63, 65, 71, 72, 77, 80, 81, 98, 104, 105, 114, 117, 151, 186; —Wayne, 92, 133, 137, 185, 229; constructed, 91; as a factory, 186–7; siege of, 238; trade with Canadians, 108 France: Louisiana Purchase, 216. See also Berlin Decree; Napoleonic wars Frontier: scholarly treatment of, 2 Fur trade, 15, 16, 22, 59, 60, 79, 90, 107–8, 143–4, 166, 178–9, 180, 182–5, 187–8, 189–90, 195, 199, 208, 228; critique of, 224–5; custom houses and, 191–2; military obligations and, 96; private traders, 190–1, 230–1; scholarly treatment of, 172, 190 Gallatin, Albert, 158; Report on Roads and Canals, 131, 171; Treasury deposits and, 248–9 Gano, John Stites, 65–6, 134, 247 Garrison government, 27–9, 33, 39–40, 42–3, 49 Genêt, Edmond-Charles, 89 Glaize, 48, 54, 76, 78, 81, 88, 92, 96, 98, 103, 105, 176, 177; British traders at, 81; description of, 75; destruction of, 91; Fort Defiance constructed at, 89; logistical limits of, 81–2, 85–6, 87 Goforth, William, 129 Granger, Gideon, 153, 157 Great Lakes: commerce on, 79; navigation of, 139; shipbuilding, 166 Grenville, William (Lord Grenville), 181 Habersham, Joseph, 154, 157 Hackingpomska, 223 Hamilton, Alexander, 5, 41, 42, 85, 156; Report on Manufactures, 5 Hamilton, Henry, 35 Hamilton, Robert, 146–7, 166, 169; report on trade, 141–2 Hamtramck, John, 175

283 Handsome Lake, 222 Harmar expedition, 44–5, 64; defeat of, 101 Harmar, Josiah, 28, 44. See Harmar expedition Harrison, William Henry, 152, 180, 190, 193, 198, 209, 220, 222; appointment to brigadier general, 237; Battle of Tippecanoe, 235–6; copper resources, 201–2; expansionism, 237–8; Indian grievances, 208; Indian land claims, 218; initiates war, 234–5; land cessions, 214, 216, 231–2; salt, 205–6; settler violations, 208–9; War of 1812 strategy and tactics, 238, 239; war spending, 241. See also Native Americans, land cessions; Tecumseh; Tenskwatawa; U. S. military; War of 1812 Henry, Alexander, 111 Hobson’s Choice, 58, 80 Howard, Benjamin, 235 Hull, William, 229; clay resources, 202; loss of Detroit, 238, 242 Hunt, Abijah, 137. See also Sutlery Hunt, Thomas, 112, 127 Impressments, 227–8 Indian agency, 183–4, 196, 231, 232 Innes, Harry, 11, 24–5, 26, 34, 40 Internal improvements, 166, 253–4, 255–6; scholarly treatment of, 131–2, 152, 154, 171. See also Canals; Ferries; Post Office; Roads Ironworks, 38, 115; expansion of, 200; protectionism, 201 Jackson, Andrew, 250 Jay, John, 82 Jefferson, Thomas, 1, 26, 79, 159, 185; Barbary states, 226; embargo, 228; on federal sovereignty, 182; land cessions, 214–6, 231; land purchases, 216, 232; —presidential administration of, 180, 186, 193, 208; Louisiana Purchase, 214–6; resource exploration, 202–3 Johnson, John, 99 Johnston, William, 77 Kee, François, 106 Kekionga, 88. See also Miami Villages Kentucky: district of Virginia, 21, 37, 41; internal improvements, 68–9; martial economy, 71; secessionist movements, 60, 84, 85; statehood movement, 40

284 Killbuck, 18 Kingston, 144 Kirk, William, 196–7, 226 Knox, Henry, 43, 55, 56, 57, 73, 91, 118, 128 La Maigouis, 225 Lafontaine, Francis, 107 Lalawéthika. See Tenskwatawa Lasselle family, 107, 147. See also individual members Lasselle, Antoine, 106; at Fallen Timbers, 96 Lasselle, Coco. See Lasselle, Jacques Lasselle, Hyacinth, 106 Lasselle, Jacques (Coco), 106 Lasselle, Thomas, 98 Le Gris, 43, 101, 119 Lewis and Clark expedition, 202 Lewis, Meriwether: on Indian confederacies, 220–2. See also Lewis and Clark expedition Lincoln, Benjamin, 77, 78 Linnard, William, 191 Little Turtle, 43, 44, 50, 87, 112, 179, 217, 218, 229, 234; accommodation, 193–4; annuities, 197; opposes William Kirk, 196; as peace advocate, 101; salt and, 205; threatened, 226; on Treaty of Fort Harmar, 121; at Treaty of Greenville, 121–5 Littlehales, Edward B. (E. B), 143 Louisiana Purchase, 170, 214–6 Louisville, 104 Lower Canada, 58–9; crop shortfall, 109; economy of and Upper Canada, 100, 110; support of Upper Canada, 63–4, 67 Loyalists, 59, 62, 107 Ludlow, Israel, 129 Maclean, Hector, 177 Madison, James, 235; invasion of Canada, 237; vetoes Bonus Bill, 254; war message, 236 Main Poc, 232–3; rejects accommodation, 193; signs armistice, 250; wabeno, 222 Marietta, 46 Mashipinashiwish, 121 Massass, 122 Maysville Road, 69 McDougall, George, 102, 107; disliked in Upper Canada, 142–3; threatens John Askin, Jr., 113 McDowell, Samuel, Jr., 66 McHenry, James, 42, 134

Index McKee, Alexander, 60, 61, 81, 87, 89, 96, 99, 101, 107–8; on land purchases, 110; meets with confederacy, 102; store of, 88, 90 McKee, Thomas, 177 Meigs, Return J., Jr., 242, 243 Menard, Pierre, 106 Miami Villages, 43–4, 45, 48, 75, 78, 88, 92, 96, 98, 100, 105; Fort Wayne constructed at, 91; suggested as treaty location, 114 Militias, 34, 36–8, 55, 92; attack Indian communities, 115–6; attitudes about, 132; burden on, 46–7; funding of, 38, 42, 71, 248–9; labor, 243–4; racism of, 239; supply of, 34, 71; use of, 38, 42, 44, 47, 48, 57, 68, 116–7, 234, 237 Mines: exploration for, 201–2, 203–4, 255. See also Harrison, William Henry; Upper Canada; U. S. Missionaries. See Civilization programs; individuals; Society of Friends Mississinewa towns, 239 Murray, John (Lord Dunmore), 19 Napoleonic Wars, 189, 191, 226–7, 229–30, 236–7, 246, 249, 250 Nationalism, 39, 40, 83–4, 85, 129–30; lack of, 34 Native Americans: agriculture, 14, 15, 111, 184; annuity control, 196, 197, 234; —attitudes: toward Canada, 174; toward factory system, 186–7, 191–2; toward the U. S., 174, 224; Britain and, 46, 96, 102–3; Cherokee, 16, 21, 75, 77, 102, 185; Chicamaugua, 48, 77; Chickasaw, 16, 220; Choctaw, 115, 185, 220; —confederacy, 43, 54, 77, 92, 107–8; abandons Glaize, 88; coalition building, 74–5, 77–8, 85; debates war and peace, 103–4; decides upon peace, 104; expedition to Fort Recovery, 86–7; fissures within, 76, 86–7, 101, 121–5; suggests treaty location, 114; tactics, 88; threatens British officials, 87–88; Wayne’s campaign and, 85–6, 96; Creek, 75, 77, 185; Dakota, 16; —Delaware, 18, 40, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 74, 75, 85, 88, 102, 111, 115, 116, 117, 120, 121, 124, 126, 173, 174, 176, 192, 207, 219, 220, 223, 225, 231; after the Treaty of Greenville, 179; composite communities, 177–8; divisions within, 101; hunting competition, 178; refugee settlements, 99; salt and, 205; on surveying, 209; deliberation process,

Index 117–8; diplomacy and ceremony, 8–9, 105, 111–12, 115, 173–4, 175, 176; economy of, 78; —Eel River, 47, 51, 117, 125, 192, 211, 231; salt and, 205; federal system, 209–10; —Fox, 1, 216, 220, 222, 225, 231; missionaries and, 195; Spanish empire and, 220; War of 1812, 251; gender roles, 14–5, 15–6, 122, 184, 194, 198, 218, 223; horses and, 25; —hunting 14–5, 112, 178–9, 184; buffer zones, 16–17; pressure on, 207–8; —Iowa, 220, 231; Spanish empire and, 220; Iroquois Confederacy, 12, 18; —Kaskaskia, 15, 35, 51, 179–80, 192, 214–6, 220; salt, 205; trade with the U. S.; —Kickapoo, 15, 47, 51, 188, 192, 208, 210, 220, 221, 222, 225, 231, 236; burning practices, 210–11; salt and, 205; —land: cessions, 177, 214, 216, 217–8, 231–2, 232; rights, 16–17, 218, 233–4; sales, 110–11; Mascouten, 51; Menominee, 188; —Miami, 12, 32, 43, 44, 45, 47, 51, 74, 75, 86, 88, 91, 102, 103, 106, 116, 117, 121, 123, 124, 125, 192, 207, 219, 220, 231; after the Treaty of Greenville, 179; divisions within, 101; missionaries and, 194–5; salt and, 205; Mingo, 86; Mississuaga, 177; Munsee, 81; Nanticoke, 48; —Ojibwa, 16, 45, 75, 76, 81, 86, 102, 113, 120, 122, 188, 192, 225, 232, 236; missionaries and, 195; as peace advocates, 101; —Osage, 214, 222; peace treaty, 220, 231; refugee Indians and, 219; Spanish empire and, 219–20; —Ottawa, 16, 45, 76, 81, 86, 90, 102, 103, 113, 117, 120, 122, 192, 225, 232, 233, 236; refugee settlement, 99; support continued war, 101; peace factions, 101, 103, 236; —Piankeshaw, 12, 51, 179, 192, 211, 216, 223; salt and, 205; treaties, 217; —Potawatomi, 12, 15, 45, 47, 51, 75, 76, 81, 86, 87, 91, 102, 103, 117, 119, 120, 122, 188, 192, 197, 219, 220, 222, 225, 231, 232, 233, 236; hostility toward U. S., 193; missionaries and, 194, 196; peace advocates, 101; Spanish empire and, 220; refugee settlements, 98–9; resistance to U. S., 251–2; —Sauk, 1, 75, 103, 216, 220, 221, 222, 225, 231, 232; missionaries and, 195; resistance, 251; Spanish empire and, 220; Seneca, 102; —Shawnee, 13, 18, 32, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 74, 75, 85, 86, 88, 96, 97, 102, 106, 115, 116, 120,

285 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 174, 176, 192, 207–8, 219; after the Treaty of Greenville, 179; composite communities, 177–8; factory system, 186–7; make sugar with American officers, 111–2; missionaries and, 196; refugee settlements, 99; salt, 205; support continued war, 101, 120; surveying, 209; Sioux, 220; Six Nations, 75, 121, 126; spirituality, 222–5; trade and, 13–4, 18, 23, 175–6, 187–8; U. S. allies, 239; —Wea, 12, 15, 125, 179, 192, 211, 221, 231; salt and, 205; Winnebago, 208; —Wyandot, 13, 46, 81, 86, 90, 92, 105, 106, 120, 121, 123, 126, 178, 192, 223, 233, 239; divisions within, 101, 102; factory system and, 186–7; land claims, 233–4; missionaries and, 195, 198; after the Treaty of Greenville, 179. See also individuals; Blue Jacket; Little Turtle; Harmar’s expedition; Harrison, William Henry; property war; St. Clair’s expedition; Tecumseh; Tenskwatawa; Treaties; War of 1812; Wayne’s campaign Navarre, Francois, 107 Neolin, 43 New Corn, 119, 124 New Orleans, Battle of, 250 Newark, 144 Northwest Ordinances: (1784), 27; (1787), 40 O’Hare, James, 144–5 Orders in Council, 227, 228; repealed, 237, 250 Oulaqua, 210–11 Pacanne, 43; reject accommodation, 193 Pickering, Timothy, 77, 78, 114–5, 116, 127, 160, 163, 192 Pike, Zebulon: expedition, 202–3 Pitt, William, 89 Pittsburgh, 63 Pontiac, 43, 114–5 Portland, Duke of. See Cavendish–Bentinck, William Post Office, 153–64, 255; British, 164–5; British mails and the U. S., 165; bureaucracy of, 155; communication, 161; constitutional issues, 154; contractors, 162, 163; economy and, 162; merchants and, 159–60; post road policies, 156–7, 158–9, 171; post roads, 5–6, 154; Sabbatarians, 164; state governments and, 160–1

286 Posts. See Forts Presque Isle, 138, 146 Proclamation Line (1763), 18, 19 Proctor, Henry, 245–6 Property war, 23–6, 31–33, 34, 35–7, 44–6, 72, 74, 78, 80, 87, 92, 115–6, 177, 210–11, 212, 220, 234–5, 238, 245, 246; continuing, 251; pattern of, 219, 232; Revolution and, 35; selectivity of, 32–3, 239–41 Prophet, The. See Tenskwatawa Prophetstown, 229 Pucksekaw, 126–7 Putnam, Rufus, 26, 40, 46–7, 51, 161 Queen’s Rangers, 69 Quartermaster’s Department. See U. S. Quartermaster’s Department Rainville, Jacques Baby de. See Baby, James Randall, Robert, 110–11 Randolph, Beverley, 77, 78 Red Pole, 75, 76, 77, 111, 126, 127, 173 Revolutionary War, 21, 35, 36, 104 Richard, Gabriel, 195 Richardville, Jean Baptiste: rejects accommodation, 193; salt and, 205 River Raisin, 107, 109, 110 Roads, 48–49, 131, 140, 148–50, 176, 206, 252, 255–6; American, 149, 150–1, 152; Canadian, 65, 165–6, 167–9; Indian, 105, 111; military, 104, 111, 134, 165, 171; National, 159; post roads, 153–4, 158; state initiatives, 151–2, 171; western U. S., 68–9, 72. See also Internal improvements; Post Office Roche de Bout, 78, 110 Russell, Peter, 221; on customs houses, 141 Salina, New York, 186, 205 Salt mining, 21–2, 38, 115, 204–5, 234 Sandusky: Indian council at, 77–8, 111 Sargent, Winthrop, 145 Sawaghdawunk, 77 Scott, Charles, 32, 48, 50; expedition, 47 Settlers, Upper Canadian: attitudes toward government, 70, 96; call for public granaries, 110; commerce with American forts, 105, 108, 137, 138–9, 145–6; commerce with Britain, 169; commerce with U. S. citizens, 60, 106, 111, 138–9, 140–2, 146–7; land purchases from Indians, 110–11, 144, 177; loyalty of,

Index 104, 106–8, 142–3, 145–6, 245; profit from government, 65–6, 100, 109, 110, 245 Settlers, western U. S.: attitudes toward government, 5–6, 19, 28, 33–4, 38–40, 47, 48, 50, 54, 57, 84, 207–8; beneficiaries of war, 128–9; commerce with Canada, 146, 148–9, 204, 207; early agriculture, 17–18, 21; emigration, 27; free navigation of the Mississippi River, 60, 83, 85; homestead ethic, 30; as hunters, 17, 21; Kentucky violence against Indians, 116; labor, 17–18, 21–2, 213–4; Osage and, 220; on post roads, 157–8, 159; profit from government, 57, 65–7, 70–1, 84, 132, 134–7, 158, 162–3, 241–3; rumors of Indian attacks, 115; support for civilization programs, 195–6; Tenskwatawa and, 229; violate treaties, 207–9 Shaw, Catherine, 195 Shelby, Isaac, 21, 57, 80–1, 82, 115, 133, 161; on Kentuckians, 116 Shipbuilding, 243 Silver Heels, 234 Simcoe, John Graves, 54, 61, 64, 69–70, 89, 99, 100, 108, 109, 139, 145, 166–7, 168; appointed Lieutenant-Governor, 59; meets with confederacy, 102–3; mineral resources, 203 Slavery, 21, 163–4 Smith, Adam, 5, 156, 166 Smith, Thomas, 101 Smithland settlement, 207–8 Smuggling, 140 Society of Friends, 194, 222. See also Civilization programs Sovereignty, 4, 227 Spanish empire: American access to Mississippi River, 83 Specie, 84, 147–8 Spencer, Oliver, 129 St. Clair, Arthur, 47, 51, 73, 117, 129, 132, 209; on the fur trade, 180; on Kentuckians, 116; on salt, 204. See also St. Clair’s expedition St. Clair’s expedition, 48–50, 64, 74, 78; defeat of, 56, 57, 74, 77 Standing armies, 132 Stanley, William, 134 State-building, 3–4 Stewart, Robert (Lord Castlereagh), 229 Sun, The, 119, 124

Index Sutlery, 134, 135–6 Swain, Caleb, 135 Swan Creek, 100, 101, 102, 104, 109–10, 173; description of, 99; Indian council at, 111 Tappan, Benjamin, 160 Tarhe, 104, 121, 124; accommodationist, 193; on Indian lands, 122, 123, 125–6 Tecumseh: absence at Treaty of Greenville, 127; blames U. S., 233; delays war, 234–5, 236–7; Greenville village, 225–6, 229; killed, 250; militancy, 234; property rights, 233; recruits after Tippecanoe, 236; rejects accommodation, 193 Tenskwatawa: confiscates salt, 234; denounces accommodationists, 226, 232; Greenville village, 225–6, 229; as Lalawéthika, 223; message, 224–5; militancy, 234; rejects accommodation, 193 Tetepachsit, 103, 173, 176; killed, 223 Thames, Battle of, 250 Three Fires. See Native Americans: Ojibwa; Ottawa; Potawatomi Tippecanoe, Battle of, 235–6 Todd, Isaac, 230 Topinbee, 196; salt and, 205 Treasury Department, 247–8 Treaties, 51, 220, 221, 237; Amiens, 227; Convention of 1818, 254–5; Detroit, 231, 233; Fort Finney, 51; Fort Harmar, 44, 77, 117, 118, 121, 122; Fort Industry, 217; Fort McIntosh, 41, 51, 123; Fort Stanwix, 18, 41, 77; —Fort Wayne, 231; copper resources, 202; scholarly treatment of, 234; —Ghent, 250–1; scholarly treatment of, 250; —Greenville, 117, 130, 132, 173; American tactics and goals, 118–20, 125–6, 130; annuities, 192; Canadians at, 106; council deliberations, 119–27; danger to posed by Kentuckians, 116–7; displays of military strength, 114; Fallen Timbers play, 126; frugality of, 114; hunting and, 124, 130, 207; Indian deliberation process, 117–8; Indians goals, 125; interest groups, 113; Jay’s Treaty at, 123; land rights and, 122–6, 218, 233; military reserves, 127; outcomes, 127–30; provisions for, 119–20, 128; purpose of, 112–3; salt resources and, 204; scholarly treatment of, 94–5; speculators turned away, 113;

287 Treaty of Fort Harmar as basis of, 117, 121, 123; Grouseland, 217; —Jay’s, 102, 116, 123, 130, 138, 139, 231; duties and, 140; forts and, 143; Treaty of Greenville and, 181–2; Jay-Gardoqui, 60; at the mouth of the Great Miami River, 41; Paris (1783), 123, 143; Pinckney’s, 170, 180, 214; Prevost-Dearborn Armistice, 237; Rush-Bagot, 254–5; significance to U. S., 250–1; St. Louis, 231; Tripoli, 226; unfulfilled, 191; Vincennes, 217, 223 Turkey Foot: rejects accommodation, 193 Turtle Island, 100, 101 U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, 255–6 U. S. military, 55–6; conditions, 49; disciplinary regime, 49, 58, 104–5; expenditures, 134; foraging, 105; gift-giving, 111–2; internal lines, 114; labor regime, 49, 56; merchant association, 135–6; militias and, 41, 42, 47, 114, 239; settlers and, 27–9; standing army, 128–9; supply of, 34, 49–50, 62, 64, 66–8, 70–2, 80, 133–4, 240–3, 245; use of rivers, 68. See also U. S. Quartermaster’s Department U. S. Quartermaster’s Department, 162, 243; bureaucracy of, 62–3, 66–7, 70–1; contractual districts, 133; —contractors for, 63, 66, 67, 72, 242–3; critiqued, 244; invasion of Canada and, 245; problems faced by, 71–4, 143; reorganization of, 244. See also Elliot and Williams; U. S. military U. S.: administrative capacity, 7; —annuities, 119, 174, 192–3, 234; distribution of, 197; gift-giving and, 175; purpose of, 193; use of, 196; Canadian border and, 95, 140, 199; Canadians in government, 145; carrying trade, 226–7; credit of, 247, 249; custom houses, 183; expansionism, 5, 8, 252; federal system, 182, 209–10; Indian policies of, 40–1, 42–3, 112–3, 174–5, 180–1, 182, 198, 208–9, 221; institutional development, 4–5; land holder, 256; land rights, 233; mineral exploration, 201–2, 255; refugee Indians and, 144–5; —regulation of Indian trade, 180–3, 190, 217, 230–1, 251; licensing, 198–9; reimburse states, 42, 242; sovereignty of, 4, 227; state-building, 4; war with Osage, 220; western policy, 214–6, See also Civilization programs;

288 U. S.: administrative capacity (cont.) Factory system; Indian agency; U. S. Quartermaster’s Department; War of 1812 Upper Canada: defense of 54, 59, 60–2, 69, 88–9, 98, 102, 245; —economy of, 59, 60, 62, 63–5, 96, 166, 169; Lower Canada and, 110; expansionism, 8; Hessian flies, 109; internal improvements, 69–70; —military of: fails to support confederacy, 90; supply of 62, 63–4, 67–8, 109, 246; militia of, 90; mineral exploration, 203–4; provincial establishment, 54, 58–9; refugee Indians and, 92, 99–101, 108–10, 139; regional authority limits, 108, 110; salt and, 206–7; supplies U. S. forts, 145; trade with U. S. and, 106–8, 147–8; U. S. border and, 107, 138–40, 199. See also Britain; Settlers, Upper Canada Vigo, Joseph Maria Francesco, 32–3, 60, 106 War of 1812: changing strategies, 240–1; credit during, 246, 248–9; economic migration, 243; Indian confederacy defeated, 250; outcomes, 250–2, 254–5; property destruction, 238–41; roads, 168; siege of Fort Wayne, 238; significance of Maumee Valley, 238, 242; war declared, 236–7; war ends, 250; wartime spending, 241 Washington, George, 3, 42, 46, 49, 55, 82, 84, 114–5, 117; administration, 57, 79, 95, 128; on annuities, 119; Indian policy, 112 Wayne, Anthony, 34, 51, 53, 57, 59, 61, 68, 71, 74, 77, 80, 81, 89, 90, 91–2, 96, 103, 117, 130, 135, 144, 179, 209, 218; aid to Indians, 174–5; appointment to Major General, 55; concerns about Anglophilia, 84; critique of contractors, 73, 133–4; forbids Kentuckians from crossing the

Index Ohio, 116; gift-giving, 112; in Revolution, 54, 55; manipulation at the Treaty of Greenville, 113–4; on fur trade, 180–1; relationships with Canadian merchants, 105. See also Treaty of Greenville; U. S. military; Wayne’s expedition Wayne’s expedition, 54, 98, 101–2, 182; Battle of Fallen Timbers, 90; goals, 78–9; internal lines, 91–2; launches expedition, 88; lingering threat, 99; outcomes, 91–93, 174; planning and preparation, 62, 71, 77–8, 82; razes confederacy’s fields, 89–91; strategy, 78–9; tactics, 78, 79, 81, 90. See also U. S. military, U. S. Quartermaster’s Department, and Elliot and Williams Wells, William, 194; Greenville settlement and, 229; missionaries and, 195; opposes annuities, 197; William Kirk and, 196 Whiskey Rebellion, 3, 84–5 White, Isaac, 206 Whitney, Charles, 110–11 Wilderness Road, 66, 68 Wilkinson, James, 26, 32, 34, 74, 129, 135–6, 199, 220, 230–1; expedition, 47–8 Williams, Abraham, 106 Williams, Elie, 73, 91–92. See also Elliot and Williams Williams, Isaac, 105, 107 Winamek (U. S. ally), 196, 234; salt and, 205 Winamek (U. S. enemy), 238 Winchester, James, 238, 239; critiques contractors, 244 Winston, William, 136, 175 Worthington, Thomas, 160 X Y Z Affair, 180 Yellow Hair, 233 Zane, Ebenezer, 150–1 Zeisberger, David, 101–2, 148