Quakers and Native Americans [1 ed.] 9789004388178, 9789004354968

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Quakers and Native Americans

European Expansion and Indigenous Response Editor-in-Chief George Bryan Souza (University of Texas, San Antonio) Editorial Board Cátia Antunes (Leiden University) João Paulo Oliveira e Costa (cham, Universidade Nova de Lisboa) Frank Dutra (University of California, Santa Barbara) Kris Lane (Tulane University) Pedro Machado (Indiana University, Bloomington) Ghulam A. Nadri (Georgia State University) Malyn Newitt (King’s College, London) Michael Pearson (University of New South Wales) Ryuto Shimada (The University of Tokyo)

VOLUME 30

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/euro

Quakers and Native Americans Edited by

Ignacio Gallup-Diaz Geoffrey Plank

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: The ‘Penn Wampum Belt’ in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania collection. I­ llustration from Frank Speck, The Penn Wampum Belts, Leaflets of the Museum of the American Indian, number 4, (New York: Heye Foundation, 1925). The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1873-8974 ISBN 978-90-04-35496-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-38817-8 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Series Editor’s Preface  VII Acknowledgements  X Notes on Contributors  XI 1 Introduction  1 Ignacio Gallup-Diaz and Geoffrey Plank 2

The Lenape Origins of Delaware Valley Peace and Freedom  15 Jean R. Soderlund

3

Apostates in the Woods: Quakers, Praying Indians, and Circuits of Communication in Humphrey Norton’s New England’s Ensigne  30 Marie Balsley Taylor

4

“The Calamett, a Sure Bond and Seal of Peace”: Native-Pennsylvania Treaties as Religious Discourse  54 Scott M. Wert

5

“Cast Under Our Care”: Elite Quaker Masculinity and Political Rhetoric about American Indians in the Age of Revolutions  75 Ray Batchelor

6

“Strong Expressions of Regard”: Native Diplomats and Quakers in Early National Philadelphia  93 Stephanie Gamble

7

“The Great Spirit Hears All We Now Say”: Philadelphia Quakers and the Seneca, 1798–1850  115 Ellen M. Ross

8

The Meddlesome Friend: Philip Evan Thomas among the Onöndowa‘ga’: 1838–1861  136 Laurence M. Hauptman

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Tunesassa Echoes and the Temperance Struggle: a Family Tradition at Tunesassa Quaker Indian School, Allegany Indian Reservation across Generations  158 Thomas J. Lappas

10

Of African and Indian Descent: Creating Mission and Memory in Western Ohio, 1805–1850  177 Tara Strauch

11

“A Damnd Rebelious Race”: the U.S. Civilization Plan and Native Authority  197 Lori Daggar

12

Remembering and Forgetting – Local History and the Kin of Paul Cuffe in an Upper Canadian Quaker Community  218 Mary Beth Start

13

Saving Indians by Teaching Schoolgirls to Work: Quakers, the Carlisle Institute, and American Indian Assimilation  245 Elizabeth Thompson

14

Quaker Roles in Making and Implementing Federal Indian Policy: From Grant’s Peace Policy through the Early Dawes Act Era (1869–1900)  271 Carol Nackenoff with Allison Hrabar

15

The Quaker Indian Boarding Schools: Facing our History and Ourselves  293 Paula Palmer

16

A Shared Vision for Healing  312 John Echohawk

Index  321

Series Editor’s Preface Over the past half millennium, from circa 1450 until the last third or so of the twentieth century, much of the world’s history has been influenced in great part by one general dynamic and complex historical process known as ­European ­expansion. Defined as the opening up, unfolding, or increasing the ­extent, number, volume, or scope of the space, size, or participants belonging to a certain people or group, location, or geographical region, Europe’s ­expansion initially emerged and emanated physically, intellectually, and politically from southern Europe—specifically from the Iberian peninsula—­ during the fifteenth century, expanding rapidly from that locus to include, first, all of ­Europe’s maritime and, later, most of its continental states and peoples. Most commonly associated with events described as the discovery of America and of a passage to the East Indies (Asia) by rounding the Cape of Good Hope (­Africa) during the early modern and modern periods, European expansion and encounters with the rest of the world multiplied and morphed into several ancillary historical processes, including colonization, imperialism, capitalism, and globalization, encompassing themes, among others, relating to contacts and, to quote the EURO series’ original mission statement, “connections and exchanges; peoples, ideas and products, especially through the medium of trading companies; the exchange of religions and traditions; the transfer of technologies; and the development of new forms of political, social and economic policy, as well as identity formation.” Because of its intrinsic importance, extensive research has been performed and much has been written about the entire period of European expansion. With the first volume published in 2009, Brill launched the European ­Expansion and Indigenous Response book series at the initiative of ­well-known scholar and respected historian, Glenn J. Ames, who, prior to his untimely passing, was the founding editor and guided the first seven volumes of the series to publication. Being one of the early members of the series’ e­ ditorial board, I was then appointed as Series Editor. The series’ founding objectives are to focus on publications “that understand and deal with the process of ­European ­expansion, interchange and connectivity in a global context in the early ­modern and modern period” and to “provide a forum for a variety of types of scholarly work with a wider disciplinary approach that moves beyond the traditional isolated and nation bound historiographical emphases of this field, encouraging whenever possible non-European ­perspectives…that seek to ­understand this indigenous ­transformative process and period in autonomous as well as inter-related cultural, economic, social, and ideological terms.”

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The history of European expansion is a challenging field in which interest is likely to grow, in spite of, or perhaps because of, its polemical nature. Controversy has centered on tropes conceived and written in the past by Europeans, primarily concerning their early reflections and claims regarding the ­transcendental historical nature of this process and its emergence and importance in the creation of an early modern global economy and society. One of the most persistent objections is that the field has been “Eurocentric.” This complaint arises because of the difficulty in introducing and balancing different historical perspectives, when one of the actors in the process is to some degree neither European nor Europeanized—a conundrum alluded to in the African proverb: “Until the lion tells his tale, the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Another, and perhaps even more important and growing historiographical issue, is that with the re-emergence of historical millennial s­ ocieties (China and India, for example) and the emergence of other non-Western ­European societies successfully competing politically, economically, and intellectually on the global scene vis-à-vis Europe, the seminal nature of European expansion is being subjected to greater scrutiny, debate, and comparison with other historical alternatives. Despite, or perhaps because of, these new directions and stimulating sources of existing and emerging lines of dispute regarding the history of European expansion, the editorial board of the series will continue with the original objectives and mission statement of the series and vigorously “… seek out studies that employ diverse forms of analysis from all scholarly disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, art history, history (including the history of ­science), linguistics, literature, music, philosophy, and religious studies.” In addition, we shall seek to stimulate, locate, incorporate, and publish the most important and exciting scholarship in the field. Towards that purpose, I am pleased to introduce volume 30 of Brill’s EURO series, entitled: Quakers and Native Americans. In it, two scholars, Ignacio Gallup-Diaz and Geoffrey Plank, have collated and edited a timely and important collection of sixteen essays, including their Introduction, that discusses the history of the interactions of indigenous Native American peoples with ­Europeans in general but Quakers most specifically from the origins of the early North American colonies until recently. Based upon a conference on that topic held in Philadelphia in November 2016, this volume relates a long but relatively neglected history of contact and relations between indigenous peoples and the Quakers some twenty years prior to the charter by King Charles II to William Penn for Pennsylvania to the twentieth century. Written by an important group of scholars engaged, primarily, in research and writing on the relations of the First Nations with Quakers, this volume

Series Editor’s Preface

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offers a wide variety of perspectives or prisms on them. While some these perspectives are those that are to be anticipated from the research on this topic, there are others that offer strong and well-informed critiques on past Quaker conduct, such as their management of boarding schools during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which warrant consideration and reflection. Exhibiting admirable empathy on both sides of the Quaker–Native American cultural divide, this volume fills a significant gap in the literature and makes an important contribution to the field of Native America history. It also engages some of the recent scholarly questions and trends in that field, which are not as distant to those in my opinion that currently or in the future focus on the history of the expansion of Europeans and the interactions of other indigenous peoples with them on other continents and over the same time frame. George Bryan Souza

Acknowledgements We would like to thank all the individuals and institutions who helped with our November 2016 conference, including John Anderies, Amy Baxter-­Bellamy, ­Margaret Bruchac, Chris Densmore, Kaye Edwards, Ruth Flower, Barbara ­Natello, Dan Richter, Brett Shelton, and all those who presented papers and joined in the discussions. We are grateful for the funding we received from Bryn Mawr College, the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at the American Philosophical Society, the Friends Historical Association, the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, Haverford College, the McNeil ­Center for Early American Studies, and the Native American and ­Indigenous Studies Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. We’d like also to thank our anonymous peer-reviewers and everyone at Brill who helped shepherd this book into publication, particularly Gerda Danielsson Coe, George Souza, and Evelien van der Veer.

Notes on Contributors Ray Batchelor is a doctoral candidate studying the histories of early America and gender at Texas A&M University. His dissertation will further examine the relationship between Quaker masculinity and their policies concerning American Indians during the eighteenth century. Lori Daggar is assistant professor of history at Ursinus College. She specializes in early American and Native American history. Daggar’s first book project, under ­contract with University of Pennsylvania Press, traces the development of American empire by looking at the ideas, policies, and consequences of economic development, mission work, and philanthropy in Indian Country at the turn of the nineteenth century. John Echohawk, Pawnee is a founding member of the Native American Rights Fund, where he has served as Executive Director since 1977. The National Law Journal has recognized him as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States. Ignacio Gallup-Diaz is Professor of history at Bryn Mawr College. He is the author of The Door of the Seas and Key to the Universe: Indian Politics and Imperial Rivalry in the Darien, 1640-1750 (Columbia, 2005), and the editor of Colonial America: An ­Atlantic Handbook (Routledge, 2017). Stephanie Gamble earned her PhD in history from Johns Hopkins University. Her work focuses on Native American diplomatic encounters in colonial and early national America. Currently she is Librarian for History, Anthropology, and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Laurence M. Hauptman is SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at SUNY New Paltz. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of numerous articles and books on the Iroquois and other Native Americans and has testified as an expert witness in the federal courts and before congressional committees. Two of his books will be published later this year: Coming Full Circle: The Seneca ­Nation of Indians, 1848

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to 1934, from the University of Oklahoma Press; and The Wisconsin Oneidas and the Episcopal Church: A Chain Linking Two Traditions [co-edited by L. Gordon McLester III, et al] from Indiana University Press. Allison Hrabar graduated from Swarthmore College in 2016 with a degree in political science and film and media studies. She now works for the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Thomas J. Lappas received his Ph.D. in 2003 from Indiana University and has taught at Nazareth College of Rochester since the fall 2003, where he is professor of history. His publications include: “‘For God and Home and Native Land’: The Haudenosaunee and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 1884–1921” Journal of Women’s History 29, (Summer 2017), 62–85 and “‘A Perfect Apollo’: Keokuk and Sac Leadership during the Removal Era” in The Boundaries Between Us: ­Natives, Newcomers, and the Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1740–1840, ed. Daniel P. Barr (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006), 219–235. Carol Nackenoff (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is Richter Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College. She is the author of The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse (1994) and co-editor of Statebuilding from the Margins (with Julie Novkov, 2014) and of Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (with Marilyn F­ ischer and Wendy Chmielewski, 2009). Her current research examines conflicts over the extent and terms of incorporation of women, African Americans, Native Americans, workers, and immigrants into the polity between 1875 and 1925, and the role that organized women played in pressing new definitions of public work on the American state. Paula Palmer directs the Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples project under the care of Boulder CO Friends Meeting. A sociologist and writer, she she collaborated with Afro-Caribbean and Indigenous peoples in Costa Rica to publish five books of oral history. For 17 years as executive director of Global Response, she carried out international campaigns to help Indigenous communities defend their rights and protect their lands. She is recipient of the Elise Boulding Peacemaker of the Year Award, given by the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, and the Jack Gore Peacemaker Award, given by the American Friends Service Committee.

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Geoffrey Plank teaches history at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom (Penn, 2012), and co-edited, with Brycchan Carey, the essay collection Quakers and Abolition (Illinois, 2014). Ellen Ross is the Howard M. and Charles F. Jenkins Professor of Quakerism and Peace Studies at Swarthmore College. She specializes in Christian Traditions with ­particular interests in Quaker Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Gender ­Studies, medieval religious life and thought, and contemporary religious thought. Her book, The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1997), is an interdisciplinary study of late medieval ­Christian thought, practice, and iconography, and her current scholarship focuses on the field of Quaker Studies with interests in Peace and Conflict Studies. Jean R. Soderlund is a professor of history emeritus at Lehigh University whose most recent book is Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Her current book project focuses on personal and political interaction in West New Jersey among Native Americans, African Americans, and European colonists. Mary Beth Start is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, studying Canadian Quakerism, social memory, and material culture. She is former curator and administrator of the Norwich and District Historical Society’s Museum and Archives in Norwich, Ontario, where her research focused on Quaker domestic and religious architecture. She is currently a research assistant focusing on the digital history components of the SSHRC-funded project, “Canada’s 19th Century Black Press: Roots and ­Trajectories of Exceptional Communication and Intellectual Activisms,” at Huron University College. Tara Strauch is an Assistant Professor of History at Centre College. Her research focuses on religion, ritual, and identity in early America. She is the author of several essays and has published in Church History.

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Marie Balsley Taylor received her PhD in American Literature from Purdue University and her MA in Literature from Georgetown University. She is currently a postdoctoral associate at the University of Minnesota. Her book project focuses on the role that Algonquian leaders, or sachems, played in shaping seventeenth-­century New England Protestant missionary writings. She has articles forthcoming in Early American Literature and Indigenous Archives in the Digital Age (­University Press of New England). In addition to her research, Marie has taught at The Indian University of North America (Crazy Horse, SD), Oglala Lakota College (Rapid City, SD) and Bethel University (St. Paul, MN). Elizabeth Thompson is an assistant professor of English at Ohio University; she grew up in rural Pawhuska, Oklahoma, the site of the Osage nation headquarters. Her research interests revolve around the intersecting concerns of race, gender, and political identity. She is at work on a book that examines how representations of rural womanhood have changed over the last two centuries. Scott M. Wert is a doctoral candidate at Lehigh University, specializing in Atlantic World History. He is an active public historian who helped reinterpret the Conrad Weiser Homestead for the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission. Wert speaks regularly at historical sites on Native-Pennsylvania relations, the French and Indian War, Native religion and the early formation of colonial communities. He recently joined Rosemont College as an adjunct professor, serves on the board of trustees for the Berks History Center, and has taught for two decades in the public school system.

Chapter 1

Introduction Ignacio Gallup-Diaz and Geoffrey Plank Considering their relatively small numbers, Quakers appear surprisingly frequently in studies of Native American history. They figure prominently because of the political power they held in several colonies, their influence on federal policy, and the quotable commentary some of them produced while living and working on reservations and in boarding schools. Historians studying American Indians often rely on documents Quakers produced, and they take note of them as political actors, but scholarly works that focus specifically on Quaker relations with Native Americans, at least until now, have been few. The essays in this volume were first presented in November 2016 at a conference in Philadelphia sponsored by Bryn Mawr College, the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at the American Philosophical Society, Haverford College, and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, with additional funding from the Friends Historical Association, the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Penn. The event brought together American Indian and Quaker activists as well as scholars of political science, literature and history. The conference drew more than 150 participants, and in lively, rigorous, and sometimes emotionally charged sessions, common themes emerged from discussions covering centuries. Some in attendance perceived a strong resonance between Quaker belief and practice and the spiritual ways of many Native Americans. Others interpreted the long history of the Quakers’ relations with Native Americans as a repeated assertion of Christian supremacy, granting Quakers the right and duty to acquire land and authority and reshape the home lives of indigenous peoples. Still others stressed the continuing power of Native Americans from the seventeenth century to the present day, a persistence that not only allowed Native American culture to survive, but also deeply affected the Quakers from the founding of Pennsylvania forward. Quakers began documenting their friendly relations with Native Americans more than twenty years before King Charles ii granted William Penn a charter for Pennsylvania. They recorded small acts of kindness and moments of intuitive spiritual connection, believing that these hints of concord were signs of divine favour and God’s approval of their intention to make a foothold in North

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_002

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America. In 1671 when the Quaker founder George Fox travelled through the region that would eventually become Pennsylvania and New Jersey, he met men he called kings and emperors. Though he did not name these men, he emphasised their regal stature and the kindness they showed him and his Quaker companions. Fox’s Journal, for example, contains this passage: We came one night to an Indian town, and lay at their king’s house, who was a very pretty man; and both he and his wife received us very lovingly, and his attendants (such as they were) were very respectful to us. They lay us mats to lie on; but provision was very short with them, having caught but little that day.1 Quaker travellers to America and their English supporters produced and disseminated many similar accounts from the 1650s forward, and together they provide evidence that many Native Americans welcomed the Quakers. Given the intertwined history of Quakers and Indigenous peoples, it is notable that the last major work to examine the entire history of interaction between American Indians and Quakers was Rayner Wickersham Kelsey’s Friends and the Indians, which was published in 1917. Kelsey’s work is Quakercentred, and it reflects the biases and preoccupations of his day. While he gives space to criticism of the Quakers’ work, even as he does so the Quakers remain the focus of his attention. Kelsey provides chapters on preaching, practice, the peace testimony, and Quaker influence in the Grant administration, along with several separate chapters on missions founded by Quakers. In contrast to Fox, who when describing his early encounters with American Indians emphasised how they helped him, Kelsey enumerated the multiple ways in he which believed the Quakers had helped the Indians. His perspective is revealed on his title page, where he quotes “A Seneca Indian,” unnamed, declaring “If the Indian finds this history[,] his heart will throb with gratitude when he learns that the Society of Friends has stood by the Red Man of the forest at all times of difficulty and trouble, to advise and assist him.”2 This volume is organised primarily chronologically. Though the essays in this volume do not comprehensively cover the field, we believe that they provide a clear picture of the centuries-long, tangled history of interactions between Quakers and American Indians. They fill out, deepen, and sometimes correct the story that Kelsey told. Our two closing, non-academic entries bring the story to the present day. This introduction, however, is organized 1 George Fox, Journal (London, 1694), 365. 2 Rayner Wickersham Kelsey, Friends and the Indians, 1655–1917 (Philadelphia, 1917).

Introduction

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d­ ifferently to highlight common issues running through this book, and pursues five themes: Anonymity in the Sources, Angles of Vision, Affinity, Appropriation, and Authority. 1

Anonymity in the Sources

George Fox watched the world around him closely, and he carefully recorded what he saw. He was alert to the possibility that at any moment God might use a human agent to send him a message, and he was particularly attentive to American Indians, because he believed they might play a special role in Quaker history and indeed in the future of humanity writ large. Fox hoped that American Indians would join the Quakers in a great enterprise he called “the gathering of people,” ushering in a better age.3 More prosaically, he had hopes for Quaker settlement in North America, and like others with tentative plans for colonisation, he understood how valuable Native American support could be. His journal therefore contains detailed descriptions of his interactions with American Indians, but, frustratingly for historians, he seldom named those he met. This is noteworthy because Fox often meticulously recorded the names of like-minded English people he encountered during his travels in North America. This pattern of behaviour was not unique to Fox. Through the seventeenth century and beyond, Quakers were much more likely to celebrate American Indians than to name them individually. The Quakers differed from other colonists in this regard only in degree, but it is telling that even though Quakers placed Native Americans at the center of Pennsylvania’s origin myth, in contrast to the oft-repeated stories of early Virginia and the Plymouth Colony, the Quaker colony’s legend does not include individual American Indian heroes. For better or worse, there are no Delaware Valley corollaries to Powhatan, Pocahontas, Massasoit or Squanto.4 There are several possible explanations for this. Some Quakers may have thought of Native Americans only as a group, and when interacting with them expected a uniform response, a simple signal of acceptance or rejection. It was enough to say that Penn made a treaty with 3 For an enlightening analysis of the religious foundations of Fox’s outreach to non-Christian people, see Justin J. Meggitt, Early Quakers and Islam: Slavery, Apocalyptic and Christian-­ Muslim Encounters in the Seventeenth Century (Uppsala, Sweden: Swedish Science Press, 2013). 4 For a relatively unsuccessful seventeenth-century Quaker effort to preserve for posterity the memory an individual Native American, see A True Account of the Dying Words of Ockanickon, an Indian King (London, 1682).

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“the Indians.” Others may have believed that preserving anonymity was a sign of respect. The Quakers valued modesty.5 Whatever its origins, the Quakers’ reticence with names poses a problem for scholars. Over the last thirty years or so, historians have become acutely conscious of the ethical and practical difficulties of writing Native American history. In the years leading up to 1992, the impending arrival of the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of America inspired a concerted effort by scholars to re-orient the narrative of US history, so that it might not just include Native American peoples, but also explore the perspectives and motivations of Indigenous actors as agents. Scholars took up the challenge to incorporate Indigenous perspectives, which proved to be not just a philosophical or ethical effort, but also a methodological one. How could the motivations of Indigenous individuals be unearthed from sources – treaties, documents, and records – that recorded the system of colonial rule? In order to be sensitive to Indigenous political and cultural norms without using European ones as a kind of “standard,” and to convey that the processes of contact and conquest involved the interaction of equally complex, dynamic peoples, researchers had to read the colonial sources against the grain. This intervention in the field led many to adopt a multidisciplinary approach that considered archaeology and anthropology as allied fields. Some scholars described this more expansive way of researching and reading as ethnohistory, while others described the approach as the “New Indian History.” Two overviews published by James Merrell, “Some Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians,” published in 1989, and “Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians,” published in 2012, provide carefully detailed coverage of scholarship on the colonial period.6 In 1987, Merrell and Daniel K. Richter edited a lively collection of essays titled Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and their Neighbors in Indian North America 1600–1800.7 The collection’s title signalled the imperative of the ethnohistorical approach – the term “covenant chain” was coined by an English governor – and the book’s intention was to take the reader beyond what Europeans thought about Indigenous-European relations, to an explanation of the motivations of Indigenous leaders as they engaged in diplomacy with 5 For a Quaker statement associating Native Americans with exemplary selflessness see “John Woolman’s Letters to a Friend.” Friends Miscellany 1 (1831), 5–12, 6–7. 6 James Merrell, “Some Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians” William and Mary Quarterly 46 (1989): 94–119; Merrell, “Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians” William and Mary Quarterly 69 (2012): 451–512. 7 James Merrell and Daniel K. Richter, eds., Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and the Neighbors in Indian North America 1600–1800, (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1987).

Introduction

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the Europeans who had invaded their lands. The editors of Beyond the Covenant Chain followed the text’s publication with their own first monographs.8 These texts, along with Richard White’s nuanced and influential The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815, displayed the hallmarks of the new approach: an understanding that the Indigenous peoples possessed viable political cultures and societies that existed prior to the arrival of Europeans; an acceptance that the processes of contact and conquest pitted Europeans against Indigenous polities that were complex, dynamic, and worthy of respect; and a sensitivity to the nature of the massive transformations that followed the imposition of colonialism.9 In her contribution to this volume, “The Lenape Origins of Delaware Valley Peace and Freedom,” Jean R. Soderlund examines Pennsylvania’s founding, and the Quakers’ Lenape treaty partners. She demonstrates how much we can learn from the particularities of local history, and the Lenapes’ communal culture, experience, and concerns. Soderlund corrects several persistent myths: that the Lenapes were a weak, insignificant people who had little impact on the history of the Delaware Valley, that the history of the region before 1681 is irrelevant, and that Penn and the Quakers initiated the ideals that distinguished Delaware Valley society from other North American regions. While scholars do not always need to identify and name individuals, the first step in studying any person or group should be identifying, on some level, who they are. For reasons already discussed, this can present a special problem for scholars of seventeenth-century Native American history, especially those relying on Quaker-generated sources. In “Apostates in the Woods: Quakers, Praying Indians, and Circuits of Communication in Humphrey Norton’s New England’s Ensigne,” Marie Balsley Taylor confronts this challenge. Taylor provides a careful analysis of Norton’s 1659 text, which describes the experience of an inn-keeper named Nicholas Upshall who had been banished to the woods for deriding the Bay colony’s anti-Quaker law. While experiencing the hardships associated with banishment, Upshall met an Indian Prince who offered him warmth, help, and friendship. Taylor argues that the prince was no fanciful figure of the literary imagination, but in fact an Indigenous leader named Wompatuck. For a time a “praying Indian,” Wompatuck had turned apostate, 8 Merrell, The Indians New World: Catawbas and their Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal, (Chapel Hill: Univeristy of North Carolina Press, 1989); Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization, (Chapel Hill: Univeristy of North Carolina Press, 1991). 9 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

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and his offer of friendship may have been a sign of the Massachusset leader’s desire to form a new alliance. In contrast with their predecessors in the early period of colonisation, Quaker writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were more likely to name individual Native Americans. Boarding school archives, in particular, contain a wealth of information about students, teachers and parents, but to recover any element of American Indian experience, it is still necessary to read against the grain. In “Tunesassa Echoes and the Temperance Struggle: A Family Tradition at Tunesassa Quaker Indian School, Allegany Indian Reservation across Generations,” Thomas J. Lappas examines the life, career, and family of Lydia Pierce, an Onondaga woman who rose to prominence in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Growing up, Pierce had attended the Tunesassa Quaker School, and she later enrolled her sons there. She supported the school’s temperance organization. In the Quaker school’s temperance newsletter children voiced support for the assimilationist program of the wctu. But still the temperance movement provided Pierce and many students at Tunesassa a way to express and act upon their own peoples’ distinctive concerns. 2

Angles of Vision

In Facing East from Indian Country and other works, Richter has argued forcefully that we should reorient the narrative of American history, perhaps by starting earlier, but always informing our work with a recognition of North America’s ancient cultures, and always considering Indigenous perspectives.10 Over the past generation, several prominent ethnohistorians have taken up this challenge. Bruce Trigger’s The Children of Aatantsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 wove together the disciplines of archaeology, documentary research, anthropology, and Indigenous oral traditions, to describe Huron history over a long time period that remarkably included an extended examination of Indigenous society in the centuries prior to European contact.11 10 11

Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003.) See also Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts (Cambridge: Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013). Bruce Trigger, The Children of Aatantsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660, (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1976). Trigger followed his monograph with a series of methodological essays that explored multidisciplinarity, and urged scholars to exercise care when following an approach that endeavoured to have Indigenous peoples speak for themselves, and to do so through documents that were neither produced nor curated by themselves. Trigger, “Ethnohistory: Problems and Prospects,” Ethnohistory 29 (1982): 1–19; “Ethnohistory: The Unfinished Edifice” Ethnohistory 33 (1986): 253–267; “The Historian’s

Introduction

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In Manitou and Providence: Indians and Europeans in the Making of New England, 1500–1643, Neal Salisbury addressed his topic with a similar approach and practice, presenting the familiar story of the settlement of New England from the perspective of the region’s Indigenous peoples.12 Merrell’s Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier concentrates on the period after the founding of Pennsylvania, but Merrell recounts the colony’s diplomatic relations from the perspective of the indigenous negotiators and the mediators who worked with them. He seeks to explain the success of the negotiators. Few of his central figures are Quakers, and his analysis does not start with Quakerism.13 In this volume, Scott M. Wert’s “‘The Calamett, a sure bond and seal of Peace’: Native-Pennsylvania Treaties as Religious Discourse” suggests that peacetime was, in large part, created and extended by religious practices, and that Pennsylvania’s famous “long peace” may have been as much a product of Indian religious practices as it was of Quaker notions of fairness and equality. In the late seventeenth century, as warfare slowly decelerated, calumet ceremonies became a crucial religious practice in the repositioning of the Iroquois in the Northeast. Native-Native relationships underwent a significant re-alignment during the period from 1675 to 1690, as the Iroquois routed the Susquehannocks and subsequently began to attend councils as far south as Shackmaxon and Conestoga. Claiming the Susquehanna River as their own, the Iroquois openly negotiated for the right to settle there. And after their declaration of neutrality in 1701, they used the calumet to facilitate and maintain relationships with Indians far to their south, a strategy that was acceptable to the Delaware, Nanticokes, and Susquehannocks who also used their religious ceremonies of peace and adoption to cross into others’ spaces. In their self-referential histories, Quakers have often assigned themselves more influence than they deserve. In “The Meddlesome Friend: Philip Evan Thomas among the Onöndowa‘ga’: 1838–1861,” Laurence M. Hauptman examines the most prominent member of the Society of Friends involved in Seneca political affairs. Philip Evan Thomas saw himself as a reformer opposed to the Jacksonian removal policy. He sought to keep the Senecas in place and lead them to “civilization.” Many of today’s Iroquois [Hodinöhsö:ni’] believe that

12 13

Indian: Native Americans in Canadian Historical Writing from Charlevoix to the Present” Canadian Historical Review 67 (1986): 315–342; and “Early North American Responses to European Contact: Romantic versus Rationalistic Interpretations” Journal of American History 77 (1991): 1195–1215. Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians and Europeans in the Making of New England, 1500–1643 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: Norton, 2000).

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Thomas and the Quakers were behind the Seneca Revolution of 1848 which overthrew the Council of Chiefs and replaced it with an elected government. Hauptman attributes this revolution to political dynamics among the Senecas rather than the actions of any Quaker. In “‘A Damnd Rebelious Race’: The U.S. Civilization Plan and Native Authority,” Lori Daggar argues that the civilization program espoused by Quakers and federal officials in the Ohio country in the early nineteenth century created an intellectual space within which indigenous peoples could confront U.S. imperial power. Miamis, Shawnees, and their neighbors manipulated the tools and language of “civilization” and employed a variety of strategies to maintain their authority in the region that became the U.S. Midwest despite the increasing pressures of U.S. settler colonialism. Ironically, however, in adopting this strategy Indian leaders aided in the development of the U.S. economy and contributed to the growth of the early American state. 3 Affinity In general, in contrast to their Catholic counterparts, Protestant missionaries working among Native Americans have fared poorly in the scholarly literature. James Axtell’s The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America examined the process of Indigenous religious change under colonial rule, and contrasted Protestant failure with Catholic success.14 David Silverman, Linford Fisher, and Rachel Wheeler have corrected Axtell to a certain degree, emphasising that many Native Americans eventually embraced their own forms of Protestant Christianity.15 But in Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America, Silverman suggests that for many Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians, dealing with white Presbyterian missionaries could be an ordeal.16 The scholarship on Quakers ­often breaks this pattern. It is striking how many scholars of Quaker interactions with Native Americans have emphasised that some Quakers 14 15

16

James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). David J. Silverman, Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community Among the Wamapoag Indians of Martha’s Vineyard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Linford D. Fisher, The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Rachel Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope: Mohicans and Missionaries in the Eighteenth-Century Northeast (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008). David J. Silverman, Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2010).

Introduction

9

found ­spiritual kinship with the American Indians they met, at least during the first phase of colonial interactions. In his survey of early Quaker relations with American Indians, Robert Daiutolo, Jr. began in the 1650s when small groups of Quaker travellers received aid from Native Americans, establishing a pattern of good relations that he argued continue through the time of the founding of Pennsylvania.17 In her contribution to the important essay collection Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods, Carla Gerona examined the ways colonial-era Quakers learned from Native Americans in interpreting dreams.18 Similarly, Christopher Densmore has emphasized affinities between American Indian and Quaker spiritual practices.19 One of the most interesting implications of such work is that it suggests that Native Americans influenced Quaker faith and practice. In his study of the work of the Munsee leader Papunhank, Michael Goode has suggested that American Indian concerns and teachings may have affected the colonial Quakers’ general approach to the problem of alcohol.20 Writing in this volume, Soderlund argues that the Lenapes established the social and moral preconditions for peace. In addition, she suggests that the Lenapes played a prominent role in the regional debate over slavery. Conversion or “convincement,” to use the Quaker term, provides only one possible measure of spiritual affinity. In general, the Quakers were not very successful in bringing Native Americans into their fold. But the experience of Quakers with Native American ancestry is nonetheless illuminating. In “Of African and Indian Descent: Creating Mission and Memory in Western Ohio 1805–1850”, Tara Strauch describes the processes of successive migration – from Virginian to North Carolina to the Ohio country – that produced communities of Quakers of African and indigenous descent. Logan County’s population ­included Quakers and free people of color who had moved from North 17 18

19 20

Robert Daiutolo, Jr., “The Early Quaker Perception of the Indian,” Quaker History 72:2 (Fall 1983), 103–119. Carla Gerona, “Imagining Peace in Quaker and Native American Dream Stories.” In William A. Pencak and Daniel K. Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 42–62. Christopher Densmore, ed. “Indian Religious Beliefs on Long Island: A Quaker Account,” New York History (October 1992), 431–41. Michel Goode, “Dangerous Spirits: How the Indian Critique of Alcohol Shaped Eighteenth-Century Quaker Revivalism,” Early American Studies 14 (2016) 258–283. For more on Papunhank see Richard W. Pointer, “An Almost Friend: Papunhank, Quakers, and the Search for Security amid Pennsylvania’s Wars, 1754–65,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 138 (2014) 237–68; Geoffrey Plank, John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: A Quaker in the British Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), especially chapters 6 and 7.

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­ arolina after the War of 1812. By 1840, over 400 people of color were living in C Logan County. This community of historically free people of color supplied people and ideas to planners and projectors such as the Goings brothers, Augustus Wattles, and their benefactors, and proved to them that their model towns and educational efforts could succeed. Mary Beth Start, in her essay “Remembering and Forgetting: Local History and the Kin of Paul Cuffe in an Upper Canada Quaker Community,” provides a carefully-researched and well-argued study of the Wainer family of Norwich, Ontario. The family were Quakers who traced their ancestry and described with pride their Indigenous and African descent. The essay explores the politics of remembrance, as the Waiter family preserved the memory of the connections between branches of the family in New England and Canada, while “official” Quaker histories of the families in the region leave these people and their complex family histories out. While county and town histories exclude them, Start looks to other sources to make the connections clear. The family proudly affirmed and preserved its tie to Paul Cuffe, the well-known mariner of African descent from New Bedford, Massachusetts. 4 Appropriation After the founding of Pennsylvania in 1681, the Quakers’ presence in North America increased, and their influence over colonial policy grew. Most historians emphasize that Pennsylvania attracted a variety of European immigrants and that it was never simply a “Quaker colony.”21 Nonetheless, Penn’s Quakerism imbued Pennsylvania with an unusual sense of promise, and the apparent failure of that promise under the pressure of settler population growth has fascinated scholars. In A Lenape Among the Quakers Dawn G. Marsh has highlighted the disruptive effect of colonial settlement and land appropriation from the late seventeenth century forward.22 Other historians have identified later events as critical turning points when Pennsylvania’s initial good relations with Native Americans soured. Thus we have scholarship on the frontier crisis

21

22

See, for example, Patrick M. Erben, A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); John Smolenksi, Friends and Strangers: The Making of a Creole Culture in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). Dawn G. Marsh, A Lenape Among the Quakers: The Life of Hannah Freeman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014).

Introduction

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of 1728, the “walking purchase” of 1737, the Pennsylvania Quakers’ mixed response to the Seven Years’ War, and the aftermath of the Paxton riots of 1763.23 For the post-revolutionary period, the Quakers’ work among the Seneca has attracted the interest of several historians, but beyond the Seneca reservations Quaker participation in Indian agencies and boarding schools has received relatively little focussed attention.24 Clyde Milner’s With Good Intentions: Quaker Work among the Pawnees, Otos, and Omahas in the 1870s stands out. Milner emphasises the Quakers’ influence on the policies of the Grant administration and he examines the activities of Hicksite Quakers as agents and teachers on several reservations. As his title suggests, he tells a story of failure. The Quakers did not understand the needs of the people placed under their charge, nor did they fully recognize their own failings.25 By the 1880s some Quakers had turned against the federal government’s assimilationist policies.26 One of the sharpest critics was the writer Helen Hunt Jackson, and her life and work has attracted the interest of scholars.27 23

24

25 26 27

See Patrick Spero, Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Steven Craig Harper, Promised Land: Penn’s Holy Experiment, The Walking Purchase, and the Dispossession of Delawares, 1600–1763 (­Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2006); Jack D. Marietta, “Conscience, the Quaker Community, and the French and Indian War,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 95 (1971) 3–27; Michael Goode, “A Failed Peace: The Friendly Association and the Pennsylvania Backcountry During the Seven Years’ War,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and B ­ iography 136 (2012): 472–4; Robert Daiutolo, Jr., “The Role of Quakers in Indian Affairs During the French and Indian War,” Quaker History 77 (1988) 1–30; Sydney V. James, A People among Peoples: Quaker Benevolence in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 178–192; Theodore Thayer, “The Friendly Association,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 67 (1943) 356–76; Kevin Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Mark A. Nicholas, “A Little School, A Reservation Divided: Quaker Education and Allegany Seneca Leadership in the Early American Republic,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 30 (2006) 1–21; Karim M. Tiro,“‘We Wish to Do You Good’: The Quaker Mission to the Oneida Nation, 1790–1840,” Journal of the Early Republic 26 (2006) 353–376; 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,” Journal of the Early Republic 19 (1999) 601–628; Lois Barton, A Quaker Promise Kept: Philadelphia Friends’ Work with the Allegany Senecas, 1795–1960 (Eugene, OR: Spencer Butte Press, 1990). Clyde A. Milner ii, With Good Intentions: Quaker Work among the Pawnees, Otos, and Omahas in the 1870s (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982). See Larry E. Burgess, “We’ll Discuss it at Mohonk, Quaker History 60 (1971) 14–28. Kate Phillips, Helen Hunt Jackson: A Literary Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Valerie Sherer Mathes, ed., The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson,

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In this volume, Stephanie Gamble’s essay, “‘Strong Expressions of Regard’: Native Diplomats and Quakers in Early National Philadelphia,” examines the reality that 25 years after the American Revolution, 100 delegations of Native peoples representing 40 nations came to the various cities that were successively the national capital. When Philadelphia was the nation’s capital, diplomacy between federal officials and Native diplomats relied upon successful Quaker-Native relations. Diplomacy included travel and interactions outside of the “negotiating rooms,” and Quaker patterns of negotiation and conflict with the Delaware continued in the new Nation. A syncretic culture of diplomacy was created, with officials using capitol visits to perform a choreographed recital of the progress of civilization. Having established their credentials as successful intermediaries, from the 1780s onward Quakers were involved in many of the most aggressive federal and state policies toward Native Americans. Elizabeth Thompson’s essay “Saving Indians by Teaching Schoolgirls to Work: Quakers, the Carlisle Institute, and American Indian Assimilation” focusses upon the Carlisle school in Pennsylvania, which between 1879 and 1912 taught 10,000 Indigenous students. Although the school was set up under military paradigms – something that might have repelled Quakers – Grant’s “Peace Policy” sought to leverage the Quakers’ reputation for honest and kind dealings with the Indians by drafting them into service in the Office of Indian Affairs. The key tactic for disconnecting Indians from their homes and culture at the school was the Outing program which the school’s head described as “train[ing] Indians to work – a pursuit to which all Indians had a natural and intense aversion.” Girls became ideal targets for manual labor not only because they were perceived as easily domesticated and as wielding special influence over their communities, but also because, ironically, their value to white society was negligible, making their labor cheap. Convincing Indian girls that through their labor they could become true women became one of the most insidious aspects of Carlisle’s Outing program. In “Quaker Roles in Making and Implementing Federal Indian Policy: From Grant’s Peace Policy through the early Dawes Act Era (1869–1900),” Carol Nackenoff, with Allison Hrabar, argues that federal Indian policy helped drive the growth of the administrative state and the expanding role of the federal government in American life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The implementation of policies designed to expedite the civilization of American I­ ndians involved an intermingling of actors and institutions across what scholars often 1879–1885 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998); Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).

Introduction

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think of as the public-private sector divide. Quakers were not only prominent in shaping federal policies toward American Indians during this period, they were also involved in their implementation. 5 Authority As early as the 1660s, even before Fox travelled to North America, some Quakers came to see their relations with Native Americans as a test. They believed that their ability to live peaceably with the Indigenous people of the continent would prove that they were themselves a loving people, and that they had God’s favour. However, as soon as the Quakers started to occupy significant tracts of land in America, their interactions with the Indigenous people began to raise thorny ethical issues, and the Quakers invested a great deal in the outcome. At stake, many believed, was the meaning and value of Quakerism itself.28 Meredith Baldwin Weddle has examined how New England’s Quakers differed among themselves as they interpreted and reinterpreted their commitment to peace in the 1670s during Metacom’s War.29 Ellen Ross’s biographical study of the Quaker reformer Joshua Evans shows how some Quakers in the eighteenth century found ways to realise their religious commitments by working with American Indians.30 Since their earliest days, the Quakers have always had a fraught relationship to authority, but in America they have frequently assumed positions of power. On more than one occasion, some Quakers took up authority and justified themselves on the basis of their relations with Native Americans. But in doing so, they have often exposed their religious convictions to challenge. In “‘Cast Under Our Care’: Elite Quaker Masculinity and Political Rhetoric about American Indians in the Age of Revolutions,” Ray Batchelor argues that from the war years of the 1750s forward, American political culture i­ ncreasingly 28 29 30

Geoffrey Plank, “Discipline and Divinity: Colonial Quakerism, Christianity, and ‘Heathenism’ in the Seventeenth Century.” Church History 85 (2016) 502–528. Meredith Baldwin Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Richard W. Pointer, “An Almost Friend: Papunhank, Quakers, and the Search for Security amid Pennsylvania’s Wars, 1754–65,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 138 (2014) 237–68; Ellen Ross, “’Liberation is Coming Soon’: The Radical Reformation of Joshua Evans (1731–1798),” in Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank, eds., Quakers & Abolition, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 15–29. See also Geoffrey Plank, John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: A Quaker in the British Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), especially chapters 6 and 7.

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valued martial virtue as the basis for citizenship. Pacifist Quakers were challenged by this trend, and in response Quaker men felt obliged to prove their masculinity. This concern helped motivate Quaker missionary activity in the early republic, and the Quakers’ participation in the formation and implementation of U.S. policy toward Native Americans. As the Quakers took part in U.S. government initiatives, their rhetoric shifted from espousals of equality with Native Americans toward assertions of patriarchal control over them. Ellen M. Ross’s essay, “‘The Great Spirit Hears All We Now Say’: Philadelphia Quakers and the Seneca, 1798–1850” tells a story of multiple tragedies. Ross studies the experiences of Halliday Jackson (1771–1835), who lived with the Seneca in Alleghany from 1798–1800, and his son and daughter-in-law John Jackson (1809?–1855) and Rachel Tyson Jackson (1807–1883), prominent educators, reformers, and activists. Believing a war of genocide was being waged against Indigenous communities, they were trapped by the very categories they used to frame their strategies for change, categories ensnared in the limited social vision of their time. The Jackson family history demonstrates that Quakers consistently pursued a plan for “civilization” for more than fifty years, even in the face of a great deal of evidence that the process was not advancing as they imagined it would. These Quakers selected a model of reform that unquestioningly privileged White ways of life and White claims to divine guidance. They thought they had a personal relationship with the creator, but could not conceive of a connection with their Indigenous sisters and brothers. Our conference in Philadelphia included important contributions from Quakers and Native Americans in attendance, and our collection ends with two contributors who are not academics: Paula Palmer, who is Director of the Boulder Friends Meeting’s “Toward Right Relationship Project,” and conducted research in response to a call from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition for churches to examine their historical roles in Indian boarding schools; and John Echohawk, (Pawnee), Director of the Native American Rights Fund. As Palmer reports, Quakers founded and for various periods of time operated at least thirty day and boarding schools for Native children in ten states: Alaska, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, New York, North Carolina, and Alabama. Friends eventually turned some of these schools over to the federal government. John Echohawk’s comments “A Shared Vision of Healing” spoke powerfully to the concerns of the gathering, and they were particularly timely, coming as they did in the second week of November 2016. The editors hope these essays convey a sense of the long, complex history of interaction between Quakers and American Indians, and that they inspire at least some of our readers to conduct further research. The historian’s work, like the work of peacemakers, is never done.

Chapter 2

The Lenape Origins of Delaware Valley Peace and Freedom Jean R. Soderlund Benjamin West’s famous painting Penn’s Treaty with the Indians (1771–72) reflects in a number of ways the mythology that developed about the early Delaware Valley. Historians have noted its inaccuracy in several details: there were no brick buildings in Philadelphia in 1682 when Penn arrived and, at age 38, he was thinner and younger than portrayed. More important, though, Penn is shown as the dominant, patriarchal figure bestowing his plans for a peaceful relationship when in fact the Lenape Indians dominated the region at this time. The painting gives the impression that Penn is conferring gifts on his inferiors rather than exchanging goods with trading partners to purchase land.1 Three myths had developed before West completed his painting and have evolved ever since. The first myth is that the Lenapes were a weak, insignificant people who had little impact on the history of the Delaware Valley. Rather, the Indians controlled the region through most the seventeenth century by means of their superior numbers, strategic use of violence and the threat of violence, and emphasis on peace and freedom. The second myth is that the history of the Delaware Valley before 1681 is irrelevant—that the region had no history during the seventeenth century unlike Virginia, New Netherland, and New England that experienced wars and expropriation of Native lands prior to 1680. There is a tendency among historians to consider periods when Indians dominated as prehistory, and only p ­ eriods 1 Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–1987), 2:453; Andrew Newman, On Records: Delaware Indians, Colonists, and the Media of History and Memory (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 95–132; Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 1–6, 170–71; James O’Neil Spady, “Colonialism and the Discursive Antecedents of Penn’s Treaty with the Indians,” in William A. Pencak and Daniel K. Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 18–40; Mary Douglas, “Forward,” in Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), vii.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_003

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when colonists took control as history. We must consider the seventeenth century in order to place New Jersey and Pennsylvania into the context of the larger development of the British colonies in North America. It is misleading to consider the history of New England, New Netherland, and Virginia from the early 1600s but start New Jersey and Pennsylvania history in the 1670s, long after Europeans and Native Americans first came into contact and established patterns of interaction. The third myth is that William Penn and the Quakers initiated the ideals that distinguished Delaware Valley society from other North American regions: peaceful resolution of conflict between Europeans and Natives; respect for people of different ethnic backgrounds; freedom of religion; opposition to centralized authority; and emphasis on personal liberty for others as well as one’s self. The Lenapes and “old settlers,” who included Swedes, Finns, and other Europeans who settled prior to the Quakers and were part of the community known as the “Swedish nation,” developed a society based on these features to benefit from trade and keep peace. The kind of liberty that the Lenapes fostered was personal freedom for one’s self and others. David Hackett Fischer in Albion’s Seed called this reciprocal liberty, unlike that of slaveholding societies in which slave owners wanted freedom for themselves but not for everyone.2 This liberty reflects the reciprocity that is so important to Lenape culture. Penn’s Treaty with the Lenapes is reputed to have occurred at Shackamaxon, and a treaty may have occurred there soon after Penn arrived in the fall of 1682, but it was not the first meeting between his government and the Lenapes. In the spring and summer of 1682, Penn’s cousin and deputy governor William Markham, an Anglican, had negotiated Pennsylvania’s first treaty with sixteen Lenape sachems, a treaty that obtained land in what is now lower Bucks County and incorporated principles that we consider part of the legendary Penn’s Treaty. With help from Swedish interpreter Lasse Cock and other old settlers, Markham reached a deal with the Lenapes that he hoped would last. The deed was for a substantial territory including land where Penn developed his manor, Pennsbury. In 1677–1680, the Lenapes had contested ownership of some of this land with Governor Edmund Andros, who administered the Duke of York’s government in the Delaware Valley. The detail of the 1682 deed, the number of Lenape sachems involved, and the worth of the goods exchanged show that

2 David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 595.

The Lenape Origins of Delaware Valley Peace and Freedom

17

Markham wanted to reduce the risk of conflict over what land was sold and who had sold it.3 To obtain the sachems’ agreement, Markham paid (on behalf of Penn) a substantial amount of wampum, cloth and clothing, guns and ammunition, metal goods, and alcohol. This was consistent with earlier treaties between Lenapes and the Swedish, Dutch, and English colonists. The Lenapes anticipated annual gifts; fair exchange in the fur trade; renegotiated agreements when lands remained unsettled; and rights to live, hunt, fish, and travel in the region. As in earlier years, the Lenapes believed that they were permitting the Europeans to build small settlements and trading posts, not ceding large expanses of land. Markham appended a memorandum to the 1682 deed, which is published in The Papers of William Penn. Markham recorded key points from his discussion with the Lenapes: that they would “give us notice if any other Indians have any design against us”; “that there be a meeting once every year to read the articles over”; “that we may freely pass through any of their lands as well that which is not purchased as that which is, without molestation as they do quietly amongst us”; “that if English or Indian should at any time abuse one the other, complaint might be made to their respective government, and that satisfaction may be made according to their offence”; and “that if at any time an Englishman should by mistake seat himself upon land not purchased of the Indians, that the Indians shall not molest them before complaint made to the government where they shall receive satisfaction.”4 Here we have Markham’s notes from a treaty that was for a sizeable land purchase but also established the principles of engagement with the Lenapes that became known as Penn’s Treaty. As with the Swedes and Finns earlier, the Lenapes established an alliance with Pennsylvania that pledged that they would warn the colonists about planned assaults by other Natives; that both sides would share access to lands and natural resources; and in cases of violence by English or Lenape people or wrongful settlement by the English, the two governments would meet and make appropriate compensation rather than attack. Markham and the sachems also agreed to hold an annual 3 Dunn and Dunn, eds., Papers of William Penn, 2: 261–69; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 146–47, 168–71. 4 Dunn and Dunn, eds., Papers of William Penn, 2: 261–69; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 168–71. In this paper, I have modernized spelling and capitalization when quoting from English-language sources but have not altered the names of people and places; I have changed use of the thorn, for example “ye” to the intended word “the”; lowered superscript letters to the line; expanded abbreviations; and changed punctuation only when necessary for clarity. I have not altered the text when quoting from translations of Swedish documents.

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­ eeting where they would review their agreement and, though unrecorded m by Markham, the Proprietor or his representatives would present annual payment for use of Lenape territory. These provisions are consistent with Lenape reciprocity and the ideals and practices that the Natives had used to shape Delaware Valley society before 1682.

…

At first contact with Europeans and through most of the seventeenth century, Lenape Country stretched from Cape Henlopen in Delaware north to what is now Trenton, New Jersey, and through eastern Pennsylvania to the Lehigh ­Valley. The Lenapes’ language is Unami (or Lenape), which is closely related to other Algonquian dialects. The word “Lenape” in Unami means an “ordinary, real, original” person, and is the word by which Lenapes refer to themselves. Their close relatives are the Munsees, whose language is somewhat different from Unami; the Munsee homeland extended from central and northern New Jersey through southern New York. The names “Unami” and “Munsee” were the words each group used to designate the other; the word Unami, for example, in Munsee means “person from down river.” By the mid-eighteenth century, European colonists referred to both the Lenapes and Munsees as Delawares, a name many of the Natives adopted as well.5 In the seventeenth century, Lenapes lived in autonomous towns of about two hundred people along tributaries of the Lenapewihittuck, which the Dutch and Swedes called South River, and the English named the Delaware. Lenape communities such as the Armewamese, Cohanseys, Mantes, and Sanhickans owned land on both banks of the river, which was a thoroughfare, not a boundary. They built unpalisaded towns that reflected their good relations with one another and intention to avoid war with other nations. Like other Native Americans, Lenapes held land as a community rather than granting ownership rights to individuals. Their socio-political structure was egalitarian and democratic as sachems made decisions with the guidance of a council of elders and other leaders. The sachems held power as long as they followed the collective will of their people. The Lenapes had no central government that linked towns together. Their independent towns allied with one another for diplomacy and war, as they made alliances with other people—even Europeans.6 5 Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 13; William C. Reichel, “Names Which the Lenni Lennape or Delaware Indians Gave to Rivers, Streams and Localities…from a Ms. by John Heckewelder,” in Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society, vol. 1 (Nazareth, Pa.: Whitefield House, 1876), 23 [249]. 6 Important sources on the Lenapes in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries include Gunlög Fur, A Nation of Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters among the Delaware Indians

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Personal liberty based on the principle of reciprocity sustained Lenape society. Acting within the context of communal values, men and women chose marriage partners, both could easily divorce, and parents raised their children in a loving, permissive manner. Unlike some other Indian nations, Lenapes opposed enslavement and forced adoption for others as well as for their own people. The Lenapes also kept their own religion, refusing to convert to Christianity until the mid-eighteenth century when some became Presbyterians and Moravians. Similarly, they respected the rights of Europeans and other Natives to pursue their own religion and culture. The Lenapes’ belief in reciprocity can be considered similar to the Christian Golden Rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12). The principle of reciprocity also underpinned Lenape protocols of treatymaking and trade. The Natives consistently sought peaceful resolution of conflict, but turned to violence or threat of violence when necessary. In making treaties for land, they agreed that Europeans could build trading posts and small farms, but not large plantations. The Natives intended to continue to live, plant, hunt, and fish in the vicinity. They expected annual gifts in reciprocity for the use of the acreage, in effect leasing rights rather than selling land outright.7 Contact with Europeans brought change for the Lenapes as their population declined from European diseases such as smallpox, influenza, and measles. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Ives Goddard, “Delaware,” in Bruce G. Trigger, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 213–239; Grumet, Munsee Indians; Steven Craig Harper, Promised Land: Penn’s Holy Experiment, the Walking Purchase, and the Dispossession of Delawares, 1600–1763 (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2006); Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984); Jennings, “Brother Miquon: Good Lord!,” in Richard S. Dunn and Mary Maples Dunn, eds., The World of William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 195–214; Jennings, “Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth Century,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 112 (February 15, 1968): 15–53; Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 B. C.—A. D. 2000 (n. p.: Lenape Books, 2001); James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999); Jane T. Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Daniel K. Richter, “The First Pennsylvanians,” in Randall M. Miller and William Pencak, eds., Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2002), 3–46; Amy C. Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Soderlund, Lenape Country; C.A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972). 7 Soderlund, Lenape Country, 12–148.

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The Natives found it necessary to merge their communities as their population in the lower Delaware Valley decreased from an estimated 8,000 in 1600 to at least 4,000 in 1650 and 3,000 by 1670. The Delaware Valley remained Lenape Country, however, as the Lenapes outnumbered Europeans until the 1680s.8 Despite their decline in population, significant continuity existed in the Natives’ politics, culture, and society in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Lenapes retained their political sovereignty, refusing to acknowledge colonial governments or European monarchs, unlike Native people in parts of the Chesapeake and New England who lost sovereignty as a result of wars.9 The Lenapes remained influential in the Delaware Valley, enforcing their belief and practice of reciprocity, keeping the peace, and rejecting slavery. As the Natives shaped Delaware Valley society through alliance and power, the Europeans quickly learned and abided by the terms under which the Lenapes permitted them to stay. In 1631, for example, when the Dutch attempted to establish a plantation economy at Cape Henlopen (with plans for Cape May as well), the southernmost group of Lenapes, the Sickoneysincks, destroyed the Swanendael plantation and killed all of its residents numbering about thirty men. The Dutch and Lenapes had different understandings of their agreement for the land. The Dutch incorrectly claimed they had bought a broad territory along Delaware Bay, while the Lenapes had agreed only to provide space for a trading post and small farm. The Dutch also lacked trade goods to provide gifts because they had used most of what they brought from the Netherlands to try to purchase Cape May. The Sickoneysincks knew of the English mayhem at the Jamestown colony, where settlers killed and expropriated land from the Natives in Virginia and wanted to prevent similar destruction in their homeland. The Lenapes were successful for, until the 1680s, they controlled the Delaware Valley, accepting European trade goods in exchange for small parcels of land for forts and farms, but not plantation colonies. After Swanendael, the Dutch West India Company decided quickly to recognize Lenape dominance in the region, for its directors instructed the sea captain David DeVries to make peace when he

8 Kraft, Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage, 389; Goddard, “Delaware,” in Trigger, ed., Handbook, 214; C.A. Weslager, “Robert Evelyn’s Indian Tribes and Place-Names of New Albion,” reprint from Bulletin, Archeological Society of New Jersey, 9 (November 1954): 1–14; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 17–18. 9 Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1975), 149, 250–70; Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 1–36, 129–32.

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arrived at Cape Henlopen in 1632, and the Lenapes agreed. Both sides wanted to continue trade.10 With the attack on Swanendael and its memory, the Lenapes restricted European settlement for the next half century. When the English conducted a census of Europeans in 1671, just 850 Europeans lived in the lower Delaware Valley compared to an estimated Lenape population of 3,000.11 The Lenapes took advantage of the interest of Dutch, Swedes, and English in the region, but would make agreements only to lease land for trading forts and small farms. While the colonial governors obtained signatures from sachems on deeds for large expanses of land and sent them back to their superiors at home, the sachems could not read the deeds that they had signed. Their oral agreements with the colonists covered much less acreage. The colonists understood the Lenapes’ terms but wanted the written deeds to establish ownership against the claims of other European nations. From 1638 to 1655, the Dutch, Swedes, and English competed for trade on the Delaware within the context of Lenape sovereignty. Only the Swedes established a fixed settlement, called New Sweden, which remained insecure as few supplies and new immigrants arrived from the parent country. The mid1640s were a difficult time because of war around Manhattan and in the Chesapeake, and because of epidemic disease. The Lenapes killed five New Sweden colonists in 1644. At a large meeting of Lenape men and women in 1645, two leaders—Mattahorn and his son Ackehorn—argued to evict the New Sweden colonists because they lacked sufficient trade goods. The Council decided, however, that “the Swedes are good enough” to stay. Certainly, they had not multiplied in numbers like the English and Dutch elsewhere and had better relations with the Lenapes. Despite some bellicose posturing, the governor Johan Printz promised trade goods and accepted the Lenape practice of covering the dead by compensating a victim’s family rather than the European norm of punishing the murderer or going to war. And though the soldier Printz found it difficult to get along with Mattahorn and other sachems, ordinary Swedes,

10 Soderlund, Lenape Country, 35–54; Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, Volume 1: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington D.C.: University Publications of America, Inc., 1979), 2–7; C.A. Weslager and A.R. Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, Traders, and Settlers in the Delaware Valley 1609–1664 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), 84–85, 90–99, 257– 72; “From the “Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge,” by David Pietersz. de Vries, 1630–1633, 1643 (1655),” in Albert Cook Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 15–26. 11 Soderlund, Lenape Country, 86, 106, 113–17.

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Finns, and Lenapes shared resources, intermarried, and forged friendships based on similar cultures and mutual respect.12 Relations between the Swedish and Lenape leaders improved markedly in 1654 with arrival of the new governor Johan Risingh, trade goods, and several hundred settlers. Risingh met with new Lenape sachems such as Naaman to broker an alliance that survived the Dutch and English conquests in 1655 and 1664. At a conference at Tinicum in June 1654, Risingh told the sachems that the Swedes “wished to damage neither their people nor their plantations and possessions.” He suggested that each group ignore rumors of “bad intentions” from the other and warn of possible assault by an enemy nation. The sachems invited the colonists to build farms near their town at Passyunk to improve relations. Naaman promised that the Swedes’ “enemies would be theirs, and if they heard or saw anything evil, they would call our attention to it and inform us, even in the middle of the night.”13 12

13

Kent, ed., Early American, 11–14; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 55–79; C.A. Weslager, The English on the Delaware: 1610–1682 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1967), 91–95; Amandus Johnson, The Instruction for Johan Printz Governor of New Sweden (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1930), 229–43. On New Sweden, see also Stellan Dahlgren and Hans Norman, The Rise and Fall of New Sweden: Governor Johan Risingh’s Journal 1654–1655 in Its Historical Context (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988); Gunlög Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Amandus Johnson, The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware 1638– 1664, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1911); Karen Ordahl Kupperman, “Scandinavian Colonists Confront the New World,” in Carol E. Hoffecker et al., eds., New Sweden in America (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 89–111; Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin, eds., Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena (New York: Springer, 2013); Mark L. Thompson, The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013); Cynthia J. Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580–1660 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Lorraine E. Williams, “Indians and Europeans in the Delaware Valley, 1620–1655,” in Hoffecker et al., eds., New Sweden, 112–20. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 175–79; Peter Lindeström, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. and ed. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 126–32. For similar language in later treaties between the Lenapes and Pennsylvania government, see above on the 1682 treaty between the Lenapes and William Markham; Kent, ed., Early American, 282, 285–88; James H. Merrell, “‘I desire all that I have said may be taken down aright’: Revisiting Teedyuscung’s 1756 Treaty Council Speeches,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 63 (October 2006): 796, 821–26; Merrell, Into the American Woods, 160–63; Nancy Shoemaker, A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 125–27; and Robert A. Williams, Jr., Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 108–10.

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The alliance between the Lenapes and New Sweden came into play in 1655 when the Natives warned the Swedes of the impending Dutch assault against the Swedish colony led by New Netherland Governor Peter Stuyvesant. A coalition of Munsees and some Susquehannocks then attacked Manhattan while Stuyvesant and most of the colony’s troops were on the Delaware. The Indian offensive against New Netherland did not prevent Stuyvesant’s defeat of New Sweden, but forced him to return quickly to Manhattan, leaving the Swedish and Finnish community intact. Stuyvesant tried to convince the Swedes and Finns to make a mutual alliance against the Indians, but the Swedes and Finns refused, instead allying with the Lenapes to undermine his regime.14 With the English conquest of the Dutch colony in 1664, the alliance of Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns remained firm as together they resisted English efforts, under the Duke of York, to impose their power and expropriate land. The Lenapes found the English even more dangerous than the Dutch because of the record of English expansion in Virginia, Maryland, and New England. The Lenapes sometimes murdered one or two of the English and their Dutch allies, the Lenape form of mourning war, when the colonists moved into areas they had not bought and epidemic disease struck the Indian population. The Lenapes killed more than ten people over the decade after 1664. Governor Francis Lovelace alienated the Indians by refusing to meet with them in conference or to accept their practice of covering the dead. Instead, he tried to rally the Swedes and Finns to fight the Lenapes but failed.15 Edmund Andros changed English policy somewhat when he became governor in 1674. Whereas Lovelace had refused to visit the Delaware, Andros met in conference with the Lenapes to resolve issues leading to the murders and obtain rights to land. He got off to a bad start at a 1675 meeting in New Castle, offering to “protect” the Lenapes, but quickly learned that the Natives were in control. The sachem Renowewan rejected his protection, responding that they were ready to “continue in good friendship” and offering their assistance to the governor. Unlike Lovelace, Andros accepted the Lenape practices of covering the dead and reciprocity. Lenapes and colonists avoided war again—despite 14

Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 245, 261–63; Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Volumes xviii-xix Delaware Papers (Dutch Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1981), 35–36, 41–47; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 70–72; Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations, 179–86; “Letter of Johannes Bogaert to Hans Bontemantel, 1655,” in J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Narratives of New Netherland 1609– 1664 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 381–86; Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 219–27. 15 Soderlund, Lenape Country, 112–31.

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King Philip’s War in New England and Bacon’s Rebellion in the Chesapeake. The population of Europeans in the Delaware Valley remained small made up primarily of Swedes and Finns who allied with the Lenapes.16

…

The founding of Pennsylvania brought major change as thousands of colonists arrived to purchase farms and town lots from William Penn. The Delaware ­Valley became an English country but not one in which the Lenapes lost all power as they negotiated effectively and used the threat of violence against the pacifist Friends. The Lenapes continued to have an impact on colonization in the region and influenced the Pennsylvania government regarding Indian slavery. Problems quickly arose as it became clear that Quaker settlement in the Delaware Valley would be systematic and dense as in the Chesapeake and New England, not scattered as under the Swedes, Dutch, and Duke of York. Penn started communications with Lenape sachems in October 1681 by writing from England that he “desire[d] to enjoy [his new colony] with your love and consent, that we may always live together as neighbors and friends.” William Markham began purchasing land with the 1682 deed for lower Bucks County discussed above. Penn arrived in the fall of 1682 and during the next several years systematically bought land along the Delaware, Schuylkill, and lower Susquehanna rivers for goods worth the substantial sum of at least £1,200. While Penn believed that he would be able to dictate the terms of these deeds, he and his associates soon learned that the Lenapes had significant experience in these negotiations.17 Soon after Penn returned to England in late 1684, Pennsylvania official Nicholas More informed him that a problem existed with the Lenapes, especially Nanacussy, who had signed the July-August 1682 deed for lower Bucks County and another for land between the Schuylkill River and Pennypack Creek. More wrote that the “Indians are much displeased at our English settling upon their 16 Soderlund, Lenape Country, 132–41; Weslager, English, 216–18; Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vols. xx-xxi, Delaware Papers (English Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1977), 67, 71–82, 99; Peter R. Christoph and Florence A. Christoph, eds., The Andros Papers 1674–1676 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989), xiii-xvi, 131–33, 203–4, 291; Mary Lou Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America: Sir Edmund Andros, 1637–1714 (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), 25–41; Kent, ed., Early American, 37–50. 17 Dunn and Dunn, eds., Papers of William Penn, 2: 128–29, 261–69, 491; Pencak and Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies, 34; “A Further Account of the Province of Pennsylvania, by William Penn, 1685,” in Myers, ed., Narratives, 276.

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land, and seem to threaten us, saying that William Penn hath deceived them not paying for what he bought of them.” Nanacussy was impatient, “saying that William Penn shall be his brother no more” because he had not paid him fully and because Philadelphia officials failed to take action when he was robbed in the city. Surveyor-general Thomas Holme also warned Penn that the Falls sachem Tamany was threatening to burn the houses of settlers, that “he hath so discouraged our people that we cannot get them to go into Bucks County to settle.”18 In 1686, Israel Taylor created more trouble with the Lenapes in Bucks County when he surveyed land above the Falls, north of the 1682 deed, before final purchase. The Lenapes had protected the region from intruders throughout the seventeenth century. Led by Nanacussy and Tamany, they threatened to kill the surveyor unless he stopped or Penn paid for the land north of the 1682 purchase. Penn apparently never paid the sachems in full, leaving the bargain unsettled. Thomas Holme’s map of landholdings in Chester, Philadelphia, and Bucks counties indicates that whereas the western parts of Chester and Philadelphia counties had been surveyed by 1687, the northern and western section of Bucks County was not. The Lenapes kept the land because Penn lacked the funds to pay them. The draft unsigned deed for this area, dated 1686, became the basis for the fraudulent claim in the 1730s of Penn’s sons and James L­ ogan that the Lenapes had completed the sale.19 With collaboration from some Iroquois, the Pennsylvania proprietors in 1737 forced Lenapes to accept the Walking Purchase, which expropriated northern Bucks County, the Forks of the Delaware (Lehigh Valley), and part of the Poconos, evicting many Lenapes from the region in the 1740s. Within a decade, as part of the Seven Years’ War, Lenapes attacked colonists throughout the Pennsylvania frontier, including the Forks. During peace negotiations, several Lenape sachems cited this land theft as a cause of war.20 18 19

20

Dunn and Dunn, eds., Papers of William Penn, 2: 261–69, 608; 3:33; Kent, ed., Early American, 66–67; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 169. Dunn and Dunn, eds., Papers of William Penn, 3:107, 113, 131, 158; Gary B. Nash, “The First Decade in Pennsylvania: Letters of William Markham and Thomas Holme to William Penn: Part I,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 90 (July 1966): 336, 349; Kent, ed., Early American, 80; Francis Jennings, “The Scandalous Indian Policy of William Penn’s Sons: Deeds and Documents of the Walking Purchase,” Pennsylvania History 37 (January 1970): 29–32; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 171–76. Thomas Holme’s 1687 map of surveyed land in Pennsylvania indicates that surveying had stopped between Neshaminy Creek and the Delaware River at the approximate northern limit of the 1682 deed; Dunn and Dunn, eds., Papers of William Penn, 2: 649. “Moses Tatamy’s Account of Indian Complaints,” Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Indian Committee papers [pymic], Vol. AA1, 64–65; and “Conrad Weiser’s Memorandum at Fort

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By the mid-1680s, the Lenapes were infuriated and fearful, as thousands of colonists arrived in their land. The dynamic was much different from before Penn, as it was now clear that European settlement in the Delaware Valley would be as systematic and dense as in the Chesapeake and New England, not scattered as under the Swedes, Dutch, and Duke of York. Penn believed he had the Lenapes’ “love and consent” to possess their country. He had taken control with gifts and promises rather than conquest but, all the same, his colonists now populated most of the lands adjacent to the Delaware. The Lenapes no longer dominated as they had before 1681. Even so, the Lenapes retained their commitment to peace and reciprocity, effectively using threats of violence against the pacifist Friends rather than going to war. They sought nonviolent means to resolve conflict, working with Penn’s government to reduce tensions. William Penn respected their power and ideals, pulling back from outright confrontation when he ran out of funds. He sent no military troops to confiscate land, though over time the pressure of thousands of colonists, disease, and his sons’ fraud had an impact on the Lenapes similar to English violence and expropriation of land elsewhere in North America.

…

The Lenapes also stood firm in their commitment to freedom despite the Quaker colony’s adoption of the system of slavery. In 1643, New Sweden Governor Johan Printz observed that it would be extremely difficult to convert the Lenapes to Christianity, for “when we speak to them about God they pay no attention, but they will let it be understood that they are a free people, subject to no one.” Indeed, they rejected Christianization for more than a century and protected their autonomy in government, ownership of land, and individual rights. The Lenapes kept their decentralized organization of affiliated towns and, despite the claims of the Iroquois and some scholars, the Iroquois held no suzerainty over the Lenapes until the 1730s, and even then dominated only a minority who moved to their territory. The Lenapes believed in personal freedom—for individuals within their communities and other Natives, and for the European immigrants. The Lenapes defended their sovereignty but welcomed Allen,” Nov. 20, 1756, pymic, Vol. AA1, 223–24, Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pa; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 245–46, 260–65, 376 n33, 381–2 n30; Steven C. Harper, “Delawares and Pennsylvanians after the Walking Purchase,” in Pencak and Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies, 167–79; Merritt, At the Crossroads, 224–25; David L. Preston, “Squatters, Indians, Proprietary Government, and Land in the Susquehanna Valley,” in Pencak and Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies, 184–87; Schutt, Peoples, 112, 114.

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trade with the Dutch, Swedes, and English, granting them enough real estate to conduct business. Unlike the Iroquois and Indians of the American southeast, the Lenapes did not fight wars to forcibly adopt strangers into their families or enslave people.21 When the Presbyterian minister John Brainerd in May 1751 tried to convert the Lenapes (or Delawares) who had moved to the Wyoming region on the Susquehanna River, the Natives were polite but refused to meet as a group to hear his Christian message. A young woman in their community had recently received a revelation from the Great Spirit “that they should destroy the poison from among them.” Brainerd understood this to mean that “some of their old and leading men especially had imbibed some late prejudices against Christianity.” The sachems told him that by establishing missions “the white people were contriving a method to deprive them of their country in those parts, as they had done by the sea-side, and to make slaves of them and their children as they did of the Negroes; that I was sent on purpose to accomplish that design.” Though the Wyoming sachems denied Brainerd permission to preach, they invited the Presbyterian Lenapes to join them. They told Brainerd “they should be glad if the Christian Indians should come and live there; that they should take their choice of all the uninhabited land on Susquehanna, and should have liberty to worship God as they thought right.” The sachems emphasized that “the minister must not come, because he was a white man; that, if one white man came, another would desire it, etc., and so by-and-by they should lose their country.”22 The Lenapes’ warning to Brainerd reflected their long-term commitment to personal freedom, religious liberty, political sovereignty, and peaceful resolution of conflict. They knew the link between peace and freedom, voicing concern about slavery as well as loss of land. They saw expropriation of their territory, disease, war, and slavery resulting from European—and especially English—colonization in eastern North America. The Lenapes vowed that the Anglo-Americans would not “make slaves of them and their children as they did of the Negroes.” Samuel Smith observed in his History of New-Jersey (1765) that for the Lenapes “Liberty in its fullest extent, was their ruling passion; to 21

22

“Printz to Oxenstierna, April 14, 1643,” in Johnson, Instruction, 153. On the Iroquois, see Daniel K. Richter, Trade, Land, Power: The Struggle for Eastern North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 69–96; on the southeastern Indian slave trade, see Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 48–79. Thomas Brainerd, The Life of John Brainerd (New York: A.D.F. Randolph,1865), 230–39; Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 30.

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this every other consideration was subservient; …they dreaded slavery more than death.” The Swedes first brought an enslaved African man to the Delaware Valley in 1639, followed by importation of enslaved Africans by the Dutch and English in ensuing years. After William Penn founded Pennsylvania, affluent Quakers and other colonists followed suit, bringing in enslaved people from the West Indies and Africa and, after 1700, Native Americans who had been enslaved by southeastern Indian nations, sold to merchants in South Carolina, and exported to other colonies.23 With their commitment to personal liberty, the Lenapes demanded that Pennsylvania stop the Indian slave trade. They opposed human bondage in all its forms and were concerned specifically that importation of enslaved Indians would result in their own enslavement. In response, the Pennsylvania Assembly passed a law in January 1706 to end this trade because the purchase of Natives “from Carolina or other places hath been observed to give the Indians of this province some umbrage for suspicion and dissatisfaction.” Though the Crown accepted this act, the Indian trade continued and in 1712 the Pennsylvania government enacted a prohibitive duty of £20 on each imported African and Indian slave, stating in language similar to 1706 that “our neighboring Indians in this province” had complained about the trade. The British government repealed the 1712 act, as the Assembly probably expected, because of the high duty. In 1719, however, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends responded to the Lenapes’ protests, emphasizing in its Discipline that “to avoid giving them occasion of discontent, it is desired, that Friends do not buy or sell Indian slaves.” The 1719 discipline imposed no penalty for violating the ban, however, and some Quakers and other colonists continued to hold imported Indians as slaves.24 Nevertheless, the Lenapes had influenced provincial policy on slavery, using persuasion and threat of violence against Quaker leaders. The Lenapes’ actions were part of the Delaware Valley movement to abolish slavery and the slave trade. 23

24

Samuel Smith, The History of New-Jersey, 2d ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), v-vi, 144; Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 54–86; Soderlund, “African Americans and Native Americans in John Woolman’s World,” in Mike Heller, ed., The Tendering Presence: Essays on John Woolman (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill Publications, 2003), 152, 162–63; Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country, 46–79; Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002). James T. Mitchell and Henry Flanders, comps., The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, Volume 2: 1700 to 1712 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Clarence M. Busch, 1896), 236–37, 433–36; J. William Frost, ed., The Quaker Origins of Antislavery (Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1980), 131; Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery, 21, 42, 166; Soderlund, “African Americans,” 162–63; Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012), 106–23.

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The only Lenape known to have held enslaved people was the central New Jersey sachem Weequehela. Indeed, escaped African American slaves, often mulattos, took refuge among the Delawares. In 1751, a fugitive man Tom planned, according to his master, “to make him Indian stockings, and to cut off his hair, and get a blanket, to pass for an Indian; that he enquired for one John and Thomas Nutus, Indians at Susquehanna, and about the Moravians, and the way there.” A Berks County slave named Joe reportedly went “to join the Indians beyond the Mountain” in 1763, and a Maryland fugitive named James Dyson “was seen with his hair combed out straight, and an Indian matchcoat on.” The master thought he would “make for the Jerseys in that disguise, pass for an Indian, and profess himself a shoemaker.”25 The Lenapes believed that peace and freedom—like war and slavery—went hand in hand. They had promoted the principles of peaceful resolution of conflict and personal liberty long before Penn founded his colony through their relations with the Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and English colonists. The Lenapes retained these beliefs even after thousands of settlers arrived in West New Jersey and Pennsylvania, taking over more and more of their land. Soon after the Quakers founded Burlington in 1677, the Lenapes met with them to discuss rumors of war. A sachem assured the Friends that they did not intend to attack, “for when we have war, we are only skin and bones; and meat that we eat doth not do us good, we always are in fear, we have not the benefit of the sun to shine on us, we hide us in holes and corners; we are minded to live at peace.” Like Naaman in 1654, he advocated regular consultation and emphasized the Lenape philosophy of keeping peace through respect for the culture and freedom of others: “We are willing to have a broad path for you and us to walk in, and if an Indian is asleep in this path, the Englishman shall pass him by, and do him no harm; and if an Englishman is asleep in this path, the Indian shall pass him by, and say, he is an Englishman, he is asleep, let him alone, he loves to sleep.”26 The Lenapes’ belief in reciprocity shaped Delaware Valley society fostering ideals of personal freedom, religious liberty, political sovereignty, and peace. But when the Walking Purchase and multiple other injustices convinced them that the Pennsylvania government no longer respected Penn’s treaties of 1682–1684, peaceful resolution of conflict no longer seemed viable. Some Lenapes concluded that reciprocity demanded violence, and the resulting conflict escalated into the Seven Years’ War. 25 26

Billy G. Smith and Richard Wojtowicz, Blacks Who Stole Themselves: Advertisements for Runaways in the “Pennsylvania Gazette,” 1728–1790 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 34, 66–67. Thomas Budd, Good Order Established in Pennsilvania & New-Jersey in America (1685), 32–33.

Chapter 3

Apostates in the Woods: Quakers, Praying Indians, and Circuits of Communication in Humphrey Norton’s New-England’s Ensigne Marie Balsley Taylor In 1659, Quaker apologist Humphrey Norton published New-England’s Ensigne as part of his protest against the Puritan treatment of Quaker missionaries in the New England colonies. Since the first Quaker missionaries stepped ashore in Boston harbor in 1656, the Puritans saw the Quakers as a threat to their colony because the newcomers refused to obey established authorities in favor of following their own inner light. Anxious and afraid, the Puritan leaders did everything in their power to stop the spread of the Quaker movement. Their tactics included banishing, imprisoning, branding, and eventually hanging the Quaker arrivals. In response, the persecuted Quakers waged a war of words against the Bay Colony authorities. Authors like Norton relied on an emerging Quaker print network to inform others of their plight and to plead with English authorities for protection. Using a genre developed by Quaker authors in England, Norton’s tract interspersed personal stories of Quaker persecution amongst reprinted sections of Puritan laws authorizing violence against Quaker bodies. This juxtaposition of personal stories and legal documents allowed readers to see the particular and painful ways that the letter of the law was made manifest upon Quaker bodies.1 Though Norton’s literary form originated in England, his subject matter was distinctly colonial. Focused on the events taking place in New England, Norton’s tract not only told the story of travelling English Quakers, but also described the words and deeds of both Puritan settlers and Indigenous people. One of the personal stories that Norton tells is of an encounter between the Puritan innkeeper and Quaker sympathizer, Nicholas Upshall, and a man 1 For the developing Quaker network of print, see Kate Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Jonathan Beecher Field, “Suffering and Subscribing: Configurations of Authorship in the Quaker Atlantic” in his book Errands into the Metropolis: New England Dissidents in Revolutionary London (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2009).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_004

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whom Norton describes as “an Indian Prince.”2 In the winter of 1656 the Bay Colony authorities banished Upshall to the woods for publicly deriding the colony’s first formal anti-Quaker law. Norton explains that while in the woods, Upshall was helped by an Indian Prince. After having heard of Upshall’s predicament, the Indian Prince offered the elderly man food and shelter from the cold at the same time as he derided the Puritans’ cruelty at having banished one of their own. For Norton the Indian Prince served as “an example of compassion towards the persecuted.” Savage though Norton believed him to be, the Prince’s kindness towards Upshall was in marked contrast to the “barbarous” treatment of the Boston authorities.3 For Norton’s English readers, the message was clear. The Puritan’s persecution of the Quakers not only maligned Quaker bodies, but also derailed the Puritans from achieving the “principal end of [their] plantation” which was to “win and incite the Natives of Country, to the knowledge and Obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind.”4 Subsequent generations of Quaker writers continued to re-tell the story of Upshall’s encounter with the Indian Prince in part because the tale served as evidence that the first Quaker arrivals were sympathetic colonizers whose presence was not only accepted but also sanctioned by the local inhabitants. Over time the story of Upshall’s meeting with the Indian Prince has served to buttress one of the foundational narratives of American Quakerism – that of the friendly Quaker and the welcoming American Indian. In this essay, I return to Norton’s tale to address the story from a new perspective – that of the Indian Prince. Rather than locating the story of Upshall and the Indian Prince as the impetus for an emerging American Quaker discourse, I want to contextualize the narrative within an earlier seventeenth-century history of colonial contact and negotiation that took place between the arriving English settlers and local Indigenous leaders. Drawing upon what we know about the Southern New England Algonquian, the Puritan missionary project, and the development of New England Quakerism, I posit that the Indian Prince whom Upshall met in the winter woods in 1656 was not a rhetorical figure, or even an unnamed Indian, but was actually the Massachusett sachem Josias Wompatuck. Wompatuck was a former 2 In New England’s Ensigne, Norton spells Nicholas’s last name as “Upshall,” a spelling I have kept. However, the court records alternatively spell his last name as “Upsall” or “Upsal.” According to Augustine Jones, the name on his tombstone is “Upsall”: See Augustine Jones, Nicholas Upsall (Boston: Press of David Clapp & Son, 1880), v. 3 Humphrey Norton, New-England’s Ensigne (London: Printed for T.L. for G. Calvert, 1659), 14. 4 Charles I, A Copy of the Kings Majesties Charter for Incorporating the Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New-England in America, 1628 (Boston: Printed for S. Green, for Benj. Harris at the London Coffee House, 1689), 22.

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­ raying Indian who had left John Eliot’s Indian mission and relocated to his P Massachusett territories south of Boston in the early to mid-1650s.5 As the son of the Massachusett sachem Chickatawbut and nephew of the Massachusett sachem Cutshamekin, Wompatuck was part of well-known and influential family within the political and social spheres of seventeenth-century New England. Despite the influence of colonialism and disease, the Massachusett sachems retained significant authority and influence over a number of Massachusett Indians, both those who were part of the Praying Indian community and those who were not. The sachems were also large landholders in the region and their authority to distribute land and determine its use was recognized by European settlers and indigenous people alike. As such, Wompatuck was often courted by colonial authorities as part of their larger attempts to legitimize their settlements. While several factors corroborate my assertion that Wompatuck is the Indian Prince, the nature of Indigenous records in the seventeenth century means that there is some inevitable speculation in this claim. However, the value of re-inserting real Indigenous people into popular narratives is that it requires us to take seriously the experiences of native people, colonial encounters, and the nature of textual production in seventeenth-century New England. Grounding Norton’s narrative in specific New England people, places, and histories reveals that the Quaker narratives of persecution not only represent an ongoing colonial contest among Protestant religious authorities in New England, but also reflect an intersecting and complex history of negotiations between the Algonquian and the arriving groups of English settlers about land, religion, and power. Naming Wompatuck as the Indian Prince also allows us a pathway to re-frame the multi-faceted motivations behind Quaker/Indian relationships in seventeenth-century New England. Rather than simply being tenderhearted to the Quaker arrivals because of a shared antipathy to Puritan rule, Indigenous leaders like Wompatuck saw the Quakers as potential allies in their fight against expanding Bay Colony control. As alterative representatives of the English government, the Quakers presented Indigenous sachems with an opportunity to create new alliances that could provide them with access to high-ranking English officials and also serve as a means of circumventing Puritan power. Returning actual Indigenous people and places to the Quaker narratives not only allows us to rethink the historical conditions of seventeenth-century New 5 Josias Wompatuck is alternatively referenced as Josiah Sagamore, Josias Wampatuck, and ­Josiah Wampatuck.

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England, it also provides us with new options for performing what Abenaki scholar Lisa Brooks terms “unfamiliar reading (s) of familiar narratives (s).” As Brooks notes, these readings “provide a lens to [a text’s] multiple interpretive possibilities.”6 Though English authors held the pen, they recorded their tales of encounter based on their observations of actual Indian people at the same time as they themselves were physically located in Indigenous places. Using specific people and places to contextualize the conditions in which these narratives were formed illuminates alternative interpretations of familiar tropes. As I will show, analyzing the backstory behind the tale of the friendly Quaker and the helpful Indian not only provides us with insight into how American Quaker’s have narrated their past, but also reveals how Indigenous people have enacted their own beliefs about kinship, diplomacy, and sovereignty. 1

“Firsting” and Norton’s Narrative History

Though the story of Upshall and the Indian Prince provides us with new insights into the nature of seventeenth-century encounters between native people and settlers, the reason why we know of the 1656 encounter is because the story represents a number of important “firsts” for the newly-developing Quaker movement. As such, it has continued to be re-told by Quakers and non-Quakers alike. “The story captures the first recorded exchange between a Quaker and an Indian in the American colonies, however, it also marks the first instance in which a Bay Colony Puritan, Nicholas Upshall, provided public support for the Quaker cause. He would later convert to Quakerism.” For Quaker authors, Upshall’s sympathy towards the Quakers illustrated the power that the Quaker message had to change hearts and minds.7 The persecution that Upshall received from the Puritan community as a result of his support for the Quakers also made him an important proto-martyr in a number of Quaker writings. In 1659, Quaker founder George Fox included Upshall’s tale as part of his petition to Parliament to stop the persecution of Quakers in New England. As Fox explains, the Puritan’s willingness to banish “an ancient and weak man” like Upshall indicates the extent to which they are no longer fit to run

6 Lisa Brooks, “Turning the Looking Glass on King Philip’s War: Locating American Literature in Native Space,” American Literary History 25, no. 4 (2013): 729. 7 See Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 123.

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the colony as “pitty is wholly departed from them.”8 In the nineteenth-century, the story of Upshall’s banishment was adapted for popular audiences in John Greenleaf Whittier 1880 poem “The King’s Missive” and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1868 play “John Endicott.”9 However, while the story of Upshall’s banishment was re-told because of its sympathetic protagonist, it was more often repeated because of its inclusion of the Indian Prince. In 1661 George Bishop published a version of Upshall’s meeting with the Indian Prince as part of his appeal to Charles ii for Quaker protection. In Bishop’s rendering of the tale, the Indian Prince is “compassionate” and responsive to Upshall’s sufferings – a clear contrast to the Puritan persecutors.10 Eventually, the story became a staple in accounts describing the relationship between Quakers and native people. Eighteenth-century Quaker writers cloaked the story in the language of sentimentalism effectively turning the Indian Prince into a sympathetic observer of Puritan violence who is filled with compassion for the suffering Quakers. William Sewel’s 1722 version of the tale portrays Upshall as a weak and helpless figure upon whom the Indian Prince takes pity.11 In Joseph Besse’s 1753 account of the encounter, the Indian Prince’s actions are those that stem from a “compassion” that was “naturally arising from his Observation of the old Man’s Case.”12 By deploying sentimentalism in their renderings of the tale, eighteenth-century authors created a narrative structure in which the suffering Quaker is recognized as a friend by the uncivilized Indian and the two outsiders bond through shared feeling. Nineteenth-century Quaker authors were likewise fascinated with the 1656 encounter between Upshall and the Indian Prince. Adapting the eighteenthcentury’s language of sympathy to the developing discourses of race, nineteenth-century Quakers transformed the Indian Prince into a noble savage, or 8 9 10

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George Fox, The Secret Workes of a Cruel People Made Manifest (London, 1659), 2. John Greenleaf Whittier, The King’s Missive, Mabel Martin, and Later Poems (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1881), 9–16 and Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, “John Endicott,” The New-England Tragedies (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1869), 5–95. Bishop’s rendering of the encounter describes the Indian Prince not only condemning Puritan violence but also condemning the English God as he exclaims, “What a God have the English, who deal so with one another, about the worship of their God?” George ­Bishop, New England Judged, Not By Man’s, but the Spirit of the Lord. Part 1 (London: Printed for Robert Wilson in Martins Le Grand, 1661), 32–33. William Sewel, The History and Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers Intermixed with Several Remarkable Occurrences (London: Printed and Sold by the Assigns of J. Sowle, 1722), 161. Joseph Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of the People Called Quakers (London: Printed and Sold by Luke Hinde, 1753), 181.

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a “Red Indian” memorialized by the Quakers for his kindness. The most well known version of the tale is told by Wilson Armistead as part of the paratextual commentary to his 1852 edition of George Fox’s Journal. Contextualizing a section of the journal where Fox describes being welcomed by an Indian leader in present day New Jersey, Armistead reinforces the fact that Quakers and Indians have a history of good relations by penning a poem re-telling the tale of Upshall’s meeting with the Indian Prince. Asking his readers to “See here the Red Indian’s kindly care/ Though he the name of savage bear,” Armistead’s poem invokes an abolitionist undertone that portrays the Indian’s kindness to Upshall as more authentic than those who claim to be Christian yet perpetuate violence. As his closing lines suggest, the Indian is “More Christian he than they who thus pollute/ Their faith, and for their God a brother persecute.”13 Though the story has been adapted to reflect the particular aims of its various authors, it has retained the import given it by its original author. Like Norton, these later writers have re-told the story of Upshall’s meeting with the Indian Prince to emphasize to their readers that, since their first arrival upon America’s shores, Quakers have been welcomed and accepted by sympathetic American Indians. In its emphasis on firsts, however, the story of Upshall’s meeting with the Indian Prince has become deeply entangled with a narrative strategy that Ojibwe historian Jean O’Brien has titled “firsting.” Like many other New England histories that emphasize colonial firsts, the repeated tellings of Upshall’s tale work to create a narrative of modernity that begins with the ancient, savage Indian who then disappears in order to make way for future settlers. In asserting that Upshall, the first Quaker, was kindly received by the Indian Prince, the story 13

The entire poem: See here the Red Indian’s kindly care Though he the name of savage bear. Christian, more savage thou than he, Blush for thy cruel deeds of infamy: The Indian’s unmasked cup of charity Is larger than as mixed by thee. The white man ag’d, through frost and snows, A banish’d exile to his country goes, Full many a welcome does he say, To his warm house whate’er the day. More Christian he who thus does prove By practice kindred with a God of love. More Christian he than they who thus pollute Their faith, and for their God a brother persecute. George Fox, A Journal or historical account of the life, travels, sufferings, Christian experiences and labour of love in the work of the ministry of George Fox Volume 1. Ed. Wilson Armistead (London: W. AND F.G. Cash, 1853), 109 n.1.

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works to authorize and legitimize the Quakers’ continued presence among New England’s native people and their location upon native lands. The tale also implicitly sanctions the disappearance of Indigenous people from New England’s lands. As the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century versions of the tale indicate, it is the Quakers who survive while the unnamed “Red Indians” vanish. In emphasizing the continuance of the Quakers in New England, the narrative effectively replaces the Indians with the Quakers as the rightful o­ ccupants of New England’s lands. “As O’Brien writes, “the result of this p ­ olitical and ­cultural work is to appropriate the category ‘indigenous’ away from ­Indians and for themselves.”14 The repeated tellings of Upshall’s ­encounter with the Indian Prince thus serve to sanction Upshall and his Quaker successors as legitimate colonial heirs who have been given the blessing of a nameless and absent Indian. 2

Tracking Down the “Indian Prince”

In order to re-think the significance of the 1656 meeting between Upshall and the Indian Prince, we must return to the story’s origin– the first version of the narrative printed in 1659 by Humphrey Norton in New-Englands Ensigne. ­Norton was one of Fox’s earliest Quaker converts and, after a being jailed in England and Ireland for his beliefs, he arrived in Rhode Island in August of 1657 eager to spread the Quaker message. Between 1657 and 1659, Norton travelled through Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay, and Plymouth Colony alongside of the other Quaker missionaries where he was often thrown in jail and eventually branded with the letter “H” for heretic.15 Norton’s trek through Quaker communities and New England jails almost certainly put him into contact with Upshall, who, by 1657, was also residing among the Quakers in Rhode Island. It is possible then that Norton may have heard the story of Upshall’s encounter with the Indian Prince firsthand. In New-England’s Ensigne, Norton’s version of the encounter focuses primarily on Upshall’s persecution by the Puritan authorities and only spends a few lines describing Upshall’s encounter with the Indian Prince. However, when placed alongside of the historical details of Upshall’s life, the physical landscape of New England, and the ­history of ­native

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Jean O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 6. “Norton, Humphrey.” Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, Vol. 41. Ed, Sidney Lee, (London: Smith, Elder, & Co, 1895), 212–213.

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people in the region, these few lines provide several interesting clues that can be productively used to recover the name and location of the mysterious Indian Prince. Both narratively and historically, the impetus for Norton’s story about Upshall starts with the Bay Colony’s October 1656 law that gave authorities authorization to imprison, whip, fine, and, if necessary, banish the arriving Quakers.16 Fearful that the Quakers’ ideas would quickly spread, the Bay Colony not only sanctioned the persecution of professed Quakers, but also of anyone within the colony who took “upon them the hereticall opinions of the sd Quakers, or any of their books or papers…”17 In order to ensure that the entire town heard their new law, Bay Colony officials marched through the streets of Boston “with the beating of a Drum” stopping in various places around town to read the new edict out loud. One of the locations where the officials stopped was on the steps of the Red Lion Inn where Upshall served as the proprietor.18 As Norton explains, when Upshall heard the law, the angry innkeeper “did bare witness against” it, calling it “the fore-runner of a judgement upon the Countrey” and warning the authorities to “take heed what they did, lest they were found fighters against God.”19 For his words, Upshall had the unfortunate distinction of being the first to feel the effects of the Bay Colony’s new law. Fined, then imprisoned, Upshall was finally banished from the Bay Colony for his sympathy towards the Quakers and the beleaguered man left the colony sometime in November or December of 1656.20 Banishment was one of the most extreme punishments available for Puritan colonists at the time as it entailed separation from friends, family, food, and shelter. Norton emphasizes the extremity of Upshall’s punishment by 16 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 13. 17 Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, Ed. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England: Volume iii, 1644–1657 (Boston: From the Press of William White, 1854), 416. 18 The Red Lion Inn is not associated directly with Upshall until later accounts; however, he is mentioned as an Innkeeper in several later sources. For example, see Oliver Robert Ayer, History of the Military Company of the Massachusetts Now Called The Ancient and Honorably Artillery Company of Massachusetts, 1637–1888,Volume I (Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1895), 43–44 and Edwin Bacon, Bacon’s History of Boston (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1886), 394. 19 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 13. 20 I estimate that he left in November or December because the law first went into effect October 14, 1656, which was also the date of Upshall’s first offence. As Norton writes, Upshall was first fined, then put into prison, then ordered banished “within the space of one moneth.” His banishment could have occurred later in the year or even January, but the text is clear that his banishment took place sometime in the winter months. Humphrey Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 13.

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e­ mploying the rhetoric of Quaker martyrdom. In Norton’s account, banishment serves as both a testament to the cruelty of the Puritans and an attestation to the veracity of the Quaker cause.21 As Norton writes, the Puritans’ willingness to banish one of their own, “a member among them for many yeers,” because he stood up for the persecuted indicated the frenzied and vindictive nature of the Puritan leaders.22 At the same time, Upshall’s willingness to stand up for the Quakers despite the threat of banishment reaffirms the authenticity of the elderly man’s commitment to the Quaker cause. Capturing Upshall’s dedicated commitment to defending the Quaker arrivals, Norton describes Upshall as being “much refreshed at the coming of [the first Quaker missionaries]” at the same time as he was “much troubled at the cruel actings of the Magistrates and people of Boston towards them.”23 In using the term “refreshment,” Norton aligns Upshall’s persecution with the persecution experienced by the Quaker founder George Fox. In his journals, Fox uses the term “refreshment” to describe his own experience with state-sanctioned violence. When recounting a 1652 episode in which he was beaten and bloodied after standing up to the English authorities, Fox explains that the physical violence led him to be “refreshed” by “the Eternal Refreshings” of God.24 For Fox, physical violence had deep theological significance. As literary historian Hilary Hinds writes, “The violence intended by its perpetrators to demonstrate their power over [Fox] instead provides a means for the exercise of God’s power to ‘refresh,’ a power of which Fox partakes and from which he benefits but which is manifestly not his own, and which only demonstrates the failure of his opponents’ power.”25 In applying Fox’s description to Upshall – a Puritan man who had not yet converted to Quakerism – Norton signals to his readers that the violence perpetuated by the Puritan authorities ultimately serves to reveal the presence of proto-Quakers like Upshall in New England who are deeply moved by the just nature of the Quaker cause. Despite the spiritual optimism of Norton’s narrative, the reality of Upshall’s prospects for surviving the 1656–57 winter were bleak. Anxious to find an English community, Norton tells us that Upshall first headed to “Sandwitch, in Plymouth-Patent” where he hoped to be taken in by “some that were more 21

For more on the logic and rhetoric of Quaker martyrdom at this time, see Adrian Chastain Weimer Martyrs’ Mirror: Persecution and Holiness in Early New England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 101–115. 22 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 13. 23 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 13. 24 George Fox, A Journal: Volume 1, 134–135. 25 Hilary Hinds, George Fox and Early Quaker Culture (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2011), 74.

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readier to entertain the persecuted.”26 When Governor Bradford got wind of the elderly innkeeper’s impending arrival, he issued a warrant forbidding anyone to give Upshall shelter and ordered instead that the Quaker sympathizer be brought to Plymouth to face trial.27 It is as he is stranded between Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay that Upshall comes into contact with the Indian Prince. Norton’s text does not explicitly list where the encounter took place, however, the location of the story within the large narrative of Upshall’s journey makes it likely that wandering Innkeeper met the Indian Prince sometime between his leaving Boston and his arrival in Sandwich – a trip that would have taken him right by Wompatuck’s tribal headquarters which were located at the Mattakeesett Ponds, (near present-day Pembroke, MA) and about 25 miles south east of Boston. Though the lands around the Mattakeesett Ponds had always been part of Massachusett territory, Wompatuck had only claimed them as his tribal headquarters a few years before Upshall made his 1656 trek through the woods. Wampanoag tribal historian Russell Herbert Gardner estimates that Wompatuck moved to the Mattaskeesett Ponds around 1647, after he had sold off Massachusett lands around Boston and Braintree.28 Historian Richard Cogley places Wompatuck’s move to the Ponds a bit later, sometime in the mid1650s.29 In either case, Wompatuck’s decision to relocate to Mattaskeesett Ponds was influenced by his relationship to the Puritan missionary John Eliot and the Praying Indians. Following a lengthy proselytization effort on Eliot’s part, Wompatuck’s uncle and guardian, Cutshamekin, joined the Praying Indians in 1646 or 1647. Cutshamekin became the sachem of the Massachusett after the 1633 death of Wompatuck’s father, Chickatawbut. In 1650, the Praying Indians elected Cutshamekin as the chief sachem at the first Praying town of Natick.30 With Cutshamekin’s death in 1650 or 1651, Wompatuck succeeded his uncle as the chief sachem of both the Massachusett and the Praying Indians.31 However, not long after Cutshamekin’s death John Eliot reported that 26 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 14. 27 Upshall refused to go to Plymouth and eventually Sandwich authorities allowed him to remain there throughout the winter. 28 Russell Herbert Gardner, “Last Royal Dynasty of the Massachusetts,” Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society 57, no. 1 (1996), 19. 29 Cogley suggests that Wompatuck did not move to Pembroke until after he had left the Praying Indians. Richard Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians Before King Philip’s War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 141. 30 This was presumably because Wompatuck was too young to take his father’s place as sachem. 31 John Eliot, A Late and Further Manifestation (1655). The Eliot Tracts. Ed. Michael P. Clark, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 305.

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Wompatuck “turned apostate” and left the Praying Indians taking a number of his followers with him.32 After leaving, Wompatuck and his followers took up a more permanent residence at Pembroke, a location where his descendants remained until the mid-twentieth century. Wompatuck was thus residing at the Mattakeesett Ponds, a 9–10 hour walk south east of Boston, when Upshall made his 1656 trek through the woods. While the map of Upshall’s journey and the historical records regarding Wompatuck’s location make it reasonable to assume that the two men were in the same place at the same time, my claim that Wompatuck is in fact the Indian Prince is reinforced by the language that Norton uses to characterize the exchange. Norton’s description of the Indigenous man as a “prince” implies that the man was likely a sachem, or a member of the sachemship, as the English often incorrectly translated Indigenous social structures in terms of European royalty.33 At the time of Upshall’s journey through Massachusett territory, Wompatuck was the recognized sachem of the Massachusett. Upshall’s designation of Wompatuck as prince rather than king may have been in part the result of the lasting legacy of Wompatuck’s father, Chickatawbut, long known to arriving settlers as the principle sachem, or “King,” of the Massachusett.34 When the Plymouth settlers first arrived in 1622, Chickatawbut had jurisdiction over the coastal plain of southeastern Massachusetts including the area around Boston and Plymouth.35 Known to colonial leaders from the start, Chickatawbut treated with John Winthrop in 1630 to found the Bay Colony and the sachem was a repeated guest at Governor Winthrop’s dinner table.36 Colonial warfare and European diseases had eroded the power and territory of the Massachusett, however the English settlers still recognized the Massachusett sachems as the owners of significant portions of land well into the 1670s and 32 33

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Richard Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians Before King Philip’s War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 141. As historian Michael Leroy Oberg explains, “English observers, making the easy comparison to their king, consistently overstated the powers of the sachem. Sachems like Uncas could not rule without the consent of their followers, an important limit on their supposedly sovereign powers.” Michael Leroy Oberg, Uncas: First of the Mohegans (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 22. Gardner, “Last Royal Dynasty,” 18. Gardner, “Last Royal Dynasty,” 18. Gardner, “Last Royal Dynasty,” 18. The Bay Colony and the Massachusett leader remained allies until Chickatawbut’s death from smallpox in 1633, as evidenced by their reciprocal willingness to prosecute community members who disregarded the established ties between the two parties. John Winthrop, Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649 Volume ii Ed. Richard S Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1996), 50–51, 57, 78, 101.

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beyond. In the 1650s, Wompatuck’s uncle, Cutshamekin had ceded the lands outside of Dorchester to John Eliot to found the Praying Indian town of Natick, and Wompatuck himself is often mentioned in colonial land transactions.37 Though somewhat diminished in power since the arrival of the settlers, Wompatuck and his family remained significant and influential leaders within the power structures of both colonial and Indigenous New England. In New-England’s Ensigne, Norton also indicates that Upshall identified the Indian as a prince because of his performance, specifically his linguistic performance, writing that the Indian “appears [to be a Prince] by his speech.”38 While Norton does not directly say what it was about the man’s speech that denoted his elevated status, it may have been the man’s ability to converse in English as well as in the Massachusett language. As Norton writes, when “hearing of [the Puritans’] dealing with this ancient, weak man, [the Indian Prince] called them Wicked men, and said unto him, Ne.tup, which is to say, Friend, if thou wilt live with me, I will make thee a good warm house.” Adding a final clause, Norton clarifies, “this he spake in his own language.” The placement of the final clause makes it unclear whether the whole exchange took place in Massachusett, or rather it was just the greeting, “ne tup,” that was in the sachem’s language, but I would guess that it would be the latter option. As sachem of the Massachusett and a former Praying Indian, Wompatuck was long used to interacting with English settlers and missionaries. Born sometime in the late 1620s or early 1630s, Wompatuck had always lived in and around the emerging settlements and would have likely been at least conversant, if not fluent, in the English language. His uncle, Cutshamekin, had a documented history of speaking English and, since Wompatuck was raised under his uncle’s care, it would not be at all surprising if he had obtained the same linguistic fluency.39 If we presume that the majority of the conversation between the two men was in English, then Norton’s emphasis that the prince spoke “in his own 37

Samuel Drake provides an overview of Wompatuck’s land holdings. Samuel G. Drake, The Aboriginal Races of North America: Comprising Biographical Sketches of Eminent Individuals, and an historical Account of the different tribes, from the first discovery of the continent to the present period (Philadelphia, C. Desilver, 1859. 15th Ed.), 108–109. 38 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 14. 39 Cutshamekin’s English fluency is evidenced by the fact that his engagements with the English were performed without the use of translator, while other tribal leaders had documented translators. His English language skills are also referenced by Eliot, and historian Richard Cogley suggests that Cutshamekin was Eliot’s first choice for proselytization because of his ability to speak English. Richard Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians Before King Philip’s War, 40.

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l­ anguage” draws attention to the sachem’s use of the term ne tup – a term that may have been recognizable to Norton’s English readers if they had been following the literature coming out of the New England missionary project. Sixteen years prior to Norton’s publication, the New England Separatist minister Roger Williams had included a definition for the term ne tup, or “Nétop” as Williams spells it, in his A Key Into the Language of America (1643) – a glossary/ ethnography that Williams had created in part to aid the spread of “civilitie” and “Christianitie” to the “thousands of Natives all over the Countrey.”40 As Williams explains, the term was an indication of friendship. He writes that, “What cheare Nétop? is the general salutation of all English toward them, ­Nétop is friend.”41 Norton himself also glosses the term in New-England’s Ensigne writing, “Ne.tup, which is to say, Friend.”42 Norton’s emphasis on the fact that ne tup was the address that the Indian Prince used to refer to Upshall is politically and spiritually strategic. By employing a term that Norton’s English readers would have associated with the first wave of Protestant missionaries to a Quaker sympathizer like Upshall, Norton plants the idea that it is the Quakers who will be able to fulfill England’s missionary attempts to reach native people where others have failed. The Quakers, whom Indians like the Indian Prince clearly recognize as friends, are the kinder, gentler option for spreading English civility and spirituality among New England’s native people than the cruel Puritans. Conveniently, the term “friend” also alludes to the Quakers status as “Friends,” the name that the Quakers preferred to call themselves – concurrently reinforcing the fact that the Quakers are the only true “friends” of the Indians.43 The term the Indian Prince uses also plays a role within the larger logic of Quaker martyrdom. As someone who is neither Quaker nor Puritan, the Indian Prince’s use of the term ne tup places him in a position of a witness able to attest to the veracity of Upshall’s developing Quaker faith. Norton notes that the Indian Prince’s acknowledgement of Upshall as a friend comes with 40

Roger Williams, A Key Into the Language of America, (1643), (Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1936), A3. 41 Williams, A Key, 2. 42 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 14. Joy Howard talks more about the use of the term “Ne. Tup” in Norton’s tract in her dissertation, “Spirited into America: Narratives of possession, 1650—1850,” (Purdue University, ProQuest, umi Dissertations Publishing, 2011. 3507244), 33–34. 43 Though not specifically mentioned in New-England’s Ensigne, Norton likely intended this note as a jab against Williams as well. Despite being ousted by the Bay Colony, Williams remained strongly convinced that the Quakers were not true believers. See Edmund Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and the State, 2nd Ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), 56–61.

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a ­concurrent dismissal of the Puritans as “wicked men.” In pointing out the wickedness of the Puritans and the goodness of the Quakers, the Indian Prince serves as the eyes and ears of Norton’s English readers helping them to clarify the distinctions among the groups of New England Protestants striving to achieve credibility as the true and authorized missionaries upon New England’s shores. An on-the-ground witness, the Indian Prince can see with his own eyes the distinction between the Puritan abusers and the abused bodies of the suffering Quakers. While this act of witness clearly puts the Quakers in a favorable light, it also alludes to the potential conversion of the Native people. As Hinds writes, the early Quakers did not set out to proselytize new believers, rather, the Quaker doctrine of the Indwelling Christ meant that Quakers sought “to discover in all lands those who were true fellow-members with them.”44 In recognizing Upshall’s inner light, and rejecting the hypocrisy of the Puritans, Wompatuck alludes to his own potential for Quakerism. Already able to identify the light within Upshall, the Indian Prince serves as a potential proto-Quaker himself ready to be convinced by the Quaker message. Yet, while Indian Prince’s use of ne tup conveniently reinforces the justness of the Quaker cause to an English readership and implies the missionary potential of native people, there is another possible meaning behind the Indian Prince’s use of the term “friend” – that is the more practical reality that Upshall and Wompatuck may have been actual friends, or at least have known each other from previous meetings. As Norton’s text points out, Nicholas Upshall was a long-time resident of the Bay Colony. Arriving as part of the Winthrop Fleet on the Mary and John in 1630, Upshall had landed near present-day Dorchester, Massachusetts some two weeks before John Winthrop and the Arabella made their way to shore.45 Though he is better known in later writings as a Quaker, Upshall was at one time a prominent Puritan, who had, as Norton writes “endeavored out of his zeal to build a little Babel by them called the Church at the new meeting-house in Boston.”46 Though Wompatuck was a young child at the time of Upshall’s arrival, Upshall and the other Dorchester residents would likely have met Womaptuck’s father, Chicatawbut, because of his status as the recognized owner of the land in and around the Boston region.47 44 Hilary Hinds, George Fox and Early Quaker Culture, 38. 45 Oliver Ayer Roberts, History of the Military Company of Massachusetts, 43. 46 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 13. 47 We have no information regarding Wompatuck’s birth, though I would estimate that he was born sometime in the early 1620’s. When his father died in 1633, Wompatuck was not old enough to take over the duties of the sachem and, as such, his uncle Cutshamekin was appointed as his guardian. By 1644, Wompatuck seems to be acting in his own rights as sachem because he is listed as a sachem when he visited Winthrop as part of the treaties

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While there are no sources suggesting other meetings between Upshall and the Massachusett sachems, we have several records of Wompatuck’s meetings with Winthrop and other Bay Colony leaders. In February of 1644, Wompatuck and his uncle Cutshamekin treated with Winthrop as part of their arrangement offering to pay tribute to the Bay Colony in exchange for protection.48 In 1666, Upshall’s fellow Dorchester residents petitioned Wompatuck for a deed to the land around the Dorchester region, which the sachem granted. These exchanges clearly indicate that Wompatuck had long been familiar to the English settlers at the same time as he was recognized as a prominent landholder in the region.49 Upshall’s own colonial land transactions may have put him in touch with Wompatuck as well. First, as a prominent resident of Dorchester and later as a Boston landholder, Upshall would have likely come into contact with the sachem upon whose lands he was residing. More than just neighbors, the two men may have also encountered one another along the routes of information and exchange that connected the relatively small New England region.50 In a 1638 letter to Governor Winthrop, Roger Williams mentions Upshall’s Inn as a location where letters were circulated – oftentimes by Indian messengers. As Williams writes to Winthrop, “…I must request you to send your letter to Richard Collicut’s, that so a native may convey it, or else to Nicholas Upshall’s.”51 As a place of circulation, Upshall’s Inn served as a prominent node in the nexus of community relations and trade between both Indigenous people and English settlers. Significantly, Upshall’s job as an Innkeeper was also potentially the way he became one of the first Puritans to come into contact with the arriving Quakers. As proprietor of an inn located on the Boston harbor, Upshall was likely aware of who was coming and going between the Massachusett and the Bay Colony. He died in 1669 meaning that if he was born in 1620 or so, he would have been around 49 years old at the time of his death. 48 Cogely, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians Before King Philip’s War, 38, 41. 49 Oliver Ayer Roberts, History of the Military Company of the Massachusetts, 43–45. 50 In 1640, the population of Boston is estimated at 1,200 and in 1650, it is estimated at 2,000. Lawrence W. Kennedy, Planning the City Upon a Hill: Boston Since 1630 (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 255. 51 Roger Williams, Letters of Roger Williams 1632–1682 Ed. John Russell Bartlett (Providence: Printed for the Narragansett Club, 1874), 93. Williams himself was protective of Indian missions and despite his antagonism towards the Bay Colony, he did not support Quaker missionary attempts. As Baldwin explains, Williams refused a Quaker request to translate a paper into Algonquian because “he said it wasn’t the truth.” Meredith Weddle Baldwin, Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), 104. Jones also suggests that Upshall and Williams were friends – although their friendship was challenged by Upshall’s conversion to Quakerism. Augustine Jones, Nicholas Upsall (Boston: Press of David Clapp & Son, 1880), 5.

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on in and out of Boston. When Ann Austin and Mary Fisher came into the harbor in July of 1656, the Boston authorities arrested them on the ship and threw them in jail – an event that Upshall himself may have witnessed. As George Bishop suggests, Upshall knew about the arrest of the two women within a fairly short time because he immediately went to the jail and attempted to bribe the jailor with five shillings a week in order to pay for their food.52 Though Norton’s text downplays Upshall’s role as an innkeeper, his influence within Boston’s circuits of communication and exchange may have been another reason why Upshall’s opposition to the Quaker law garnered such an immediate and decisive response. As longtime citizens and landowners in nations that claimed the same space, Upshall and Wompatuck would have been bound to encounter one another as part of colonial New England daily life which meant that their meeting in the Boston woods was more likely a meeting between two acquaintances rather than a chance encounter between strangers. 3

Diplomatic Relations: Re-thinking Indigenous Motivation

While Norton’s account gives us ample reasons why Upshall would have been anxious to receive the aid of the Indian Prince in the middle of winter, the Records of the Bay Colony open the door for some potential reasons that Wompatuck may have been inspired to seek out an alliance with Upshall and the arriving Quakers. At the same October session in which the Puritan authorities passed the law authorizing the imprisonment, torture, and banishment of the Quakers and their sympathizers, they also passed a law further restricting the ability of the Indians to move freely. As the October 14, 1656 record states: This Court, takeinge into consideration the necessitie of restrayninge from the Indians whatsoeuer may be a meanes to disturbe or peace & quiet, doe order, & by the authoritie of this Court it is enacted, that henceforth no pson or psons inhabitinge within this jurisdiction shall, directly or indirectly, any ways giue, sell, barter, or otherwise dispose of any boat, skiff, or any greater vessel unto any Indian or Indians whatsoeuer, under penalty of fifty pounds, to be payd to the country Treasurer, 52

George Bishop, New England Judged, Not By Man’s, but the Spirit of the Lord. Part 1 (London: Printed for Robert Wilson in Martins Le Grand, 1661), 9. See Pestana’s description of the women’s arrival and her note on Bishop’s text for more information. Carla Gardina Pestana, “The City upon a Hill Under Siege: The Puritan Perception of the Quaker Threat to Massachusetts Bay, 1656–1661.” The New England Quarterly 56:3 (1993): pg. 323, n. 1.

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upon legall conviction, for every such vessel so sold or disposed off as affordsd (sic).53 For Indigenous people, the ocean and riverways connecting the southeastern coast were a primary means of transportation, trade, and migration. In controlling their access to the waterways, the Bay Colony was attempting to explicitly limit Native peoples abilities to conduct their affairs and sustain their communities – a prohibition that the Bay Colony had attempted many times before. As sachem of the Massachusett, Wompatuck was particularly affected by the prohibitions placed on native transportation. Among the Southern New England Algonquian, it was the sachems who conducted trade, determined land claims, and negotiated with other nations up and down the New England coast. The Bay Colony’s 1656 prohibition was one in a long line of attempts that colonists had made to limit sachem authority. It was, in fact, Wompatuck’s earlier frustration with the Bay Colony’s prohibitions that had likely led him to leave the Praying Indians in the first place. In 1650, Wompatuck’s uncle, Cutshamekin, had protested against Eliot’s proposal to form a Praying Indian town because the town represented a threat to sachem sovereignty.54 Though Cutshamekin and Wompatuck both eventually joined Eliot’s Praying Indians, they only remained members for a short time. Cutshamekin’s participation was short-lived because of his death while Wompatuck willingly left the community.55 While there is not a direct source aligning Wompatuck’s apostasy from the Praying Indians with his desire to defend sachem sovereignty, a statement Wompatuck made later in life makes it likely that the two were connected. In 1668, the year before Wompatuck’s death, the Puritan missionary John Cotton Jr. tried again to convince the sachem to convert to Christianity. However, Wompatuck again rejected the Puritan message because, as Cotton Jr. relates, “many of his Indians would then forsake him, & he should loose much tribute.”56 Wompatuck’s winter 1656 exchange with Upshall then, may 53 54 55

56

Nathaniel B. Shurtleff Ed. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England: Volume iii, 1644–1657 (Boston: From the Press of William White, 1854), 416–417. Henry Whitefield. “The Light Appearing more and more towards the Perfect Day.” The Eliot Tracts. Ed. Michael P Clark, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 202. Eliot and Cutshamekin have a number of discussions about the role of sachem power with the Praying Indian community as well. While Eliot tries to curb Cutshamekin’s power, Cutshamekin maintains his authority to trade and negotiate with other indigenous communities at the same time as he continues to collect tribute from his Praying Indian followers. See Whitefield, “The Light Appearing more and more,” 202–203. John Cotton Jr. “The Missionary Journal of John Cotton Jr.” Len Travers, Ed. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series 109 (1997), 91.

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have been motivated in part by the Bay Colony’s continued attempts to restrict sachem sovereignty. As part of his larger fight against the Bay Colony, Wompatuck may have sought out Upshall, a fellow Puritan outsider, as part of his attempts to form alliances that undermined the authority of the “wicked men.”57 Both Wompatuck’s desire to undermine Bay Colony authority and his responsibilities as a sachem serve as potential explanations for the sachem’s subsequent actions in his exchange with Upshall. As Norton writes, after greeting the wandering innkeeper, the Indian Prince offered him hospitality, stating “if thou wilt live with me, I will make thee a good warm house.”58 For Norton and future Quaker writers, Wompatuck’s willingness to house the wandering innkeeper illustrates the extent to which the sachem was touched by Upshall’s suffering at the hands of the Puritans. As Norton writes, the Indian Prince’s offer was the tangible means by which he “preach[ed] condemnation thereby to the English Christian, teaching them an example of compassion towards the persecuted, whom they of Boston had barbarously banished in the winter season.”59 While the sachem’s willingness to house Upshall is clearly in contrast to the Puritans’ banishment, Wompatuck’s actions may not have been motivated by Christian charity. As the sachem of the Massachusett, Wompatuck was the central figure responsible for greeting guests and providing them with hospitality. More than a mere kindness, Wompatuck’s hospitality was a means of practicing Indigenous diplomacy. As Lisa Brooks’ oft-cited metaphor of the “common pot” suggests, among the Southern New England Algonquian, every member of the community who resided within shared space was responsible for maintaining communal balance. As Brooks explains, “In the common pot, shared space means shared consequences and shared pain. The actions of the newcomers would affect the whole.”60 Wompatuck’s offer of shelter to the wandering Upshall was a means of practicing reciprocity at the same time as it established Wompatuck’s status as a leader able to offer aid and gifts to one who had none. As the sachem in charge of the lands upon which Upshall was wandering, Wompatuck’s treatment of Upshall reflects both his authority and his status. Wompatuck’s reception of Upshall can also be seen as a strategic means by which the sachem strove to further the alliances of the Massachusett nation. As someone who had often participated in treaties, trade negotiations, 57 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 14. 58 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 14. 59 Norton, New-England’s Ensigne, 14. 60 Lisa Brooks The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 6.

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and land transactions with the various colonial factions, Wompatuck would have been aware of the different functions and alliances that existed among the English settlers.61 For Wompatuck, the Quakers likely fit into a larger web of English municipalities represented by the Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, and Providence Plantation all of whom operated under the purview of the English King. Indeed, the Quakers themselves often emphasized their political status as Englishmen. In his 1659 tract, The Secret Works of a Cruel People Made Manifest, George Fox includes several examples of Quakers appealing to the Puritan authorities for liberty on the grounds that they were “free-born English men.”62 As historian Jenny Hale Pulsipher suggests, New England tribal leaders like Wompatuck paid attention to the distinctions among the English and used this awareness in their negotiations with the different English parties.63 Wompatuck’s offer of friendship to Upshall may have been a sign of the Massachusett leader’s desire to form a new alliance. Wompatuck may have seen a coalition with Upshall and the Quakers as a means by which he could potentially circumvent Puritan control. As Carla Gardina Pestana and Pulsipher have shown, from their very first days in New England, the Quakers set themselves up in opposition to the Bay Colony leaders and thus served as an imminent threat to Bay Colony authority.64 Challenging Bay Colony structures and ­undermining their religious and civil authority, the Quakers offered Wompatuck a new avenue for English alliances. The Massachusett sachem may even have seen the Quakers as a means by which he could obtain access to the English King – a powerful ally in the colonial world. Colonists and native people 61

In 1644, Wompatuck was one of the sachems that took part in what Richard Cogley terms the “submission of the sachems” in which the Massachusett leaders agreed to pay tribute to the Bay Colony in exchange for protection. See Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, Ed. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England: Volume ii: 1642–1649 (Boston: From the Press of William White, 1853), 56. 62 George Fox, The Secret Workes of a Cruel People Made Manifest, 3. 63 Pulsipher writes that “While the English understanding that Indians stood beneath them on the hierarchical ladder informs the dealings of Plymouth and, later, Massachusetts with the Indians in seventeenth-century New England, there is evidence that the Indians did not see their position in relation to the English as inferior at all. Plymouth, established ten years before the larger and stronger Massachusetts Bay Colony, was the first colony to treat with the Indians, and the terms of their 1621 league of peace did not make the Plymouth colonists’ assumptions of superiority over the Indians clear. It could as easily be read as an alliance of equals as a submission of one people to another.” Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects Unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 18. 64 Pulsipher, Subjects Unto the Same King, 43. Carla Gardina Pestana, “The City upon a Hill under Siege: The Puritan Perception of the Quaker Threat to Massachusetts Bay, 1656– 1661,” New England Quarterly 56:3 (1983): 323–353.

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alike had a long precedent of directly appealing to the English king when they were being shut out by the Bay Colony. Indeed, Roger Williams had appealed directly to King Charles I to legitimize his land sale from the Narragansett in 1643. A year later the Narragansett themselves had appealed to Charles for the return of their lands claimed by the United Colonies.65 We also have documentation that Wompatuck himself appealed directly to the king to get around a pernicious land dispute. Around the same time as he encountered Upshall, in 1656 or 1657 Wampatuck had leased some of his lands near Dorchester to English settler Richard Thayer. After a number of disputes with Th̀ ayer and the Bay Colony about the status of the land, Wompatuck had eventuálly found a way around the issue by leasing the land directly to King Charleś ii. In 1666 Wompatuck signed a deed leasing the land directly to Charles ii “promising him a yearly payment of five pounds (collectible from Richard Thayer)” in return for protection from the king.66 Though Wompatuck’s alliance with the King took place several years after his encounter with Upshall, his sagacity when it came to land and negotiations and the fact that he treated with Thayer around the some time as his meeting with Upshall indicate initially that the Massachusett sachem understood the potential value that an alliance with the Quakers would have for him and his nation. It also suggests the strong possibility that the Indian Prince viewed the wandering Upshall as more than just a stranded traveler. 4

The Persistent Prince

In Norton’s version of the events, we never learn if Upshall and Wompatuck saw each other again after their 1656 meeting in the woods. We do know that Upshall eventually made his way back to Boston where he was again imprisoned and finally released to the custody of his brother-in-law, John Capen of Dorchester. He died in 1666.67 Wompatuck continued to live out his life as a Massachusett sachem making the Mattakeeset Ponds his h ­ eadquarters. In 1669, he was killed in battle while leading a contingent of Mahican and Massachusett warriors against the Haudenosaunee at Caughnawaga. After his 65 Pulsipher, Subjects Unto the Same King, 54–55. 66 Pulsipher, Subjects Unto the Same King, 58. For a copy of the deed see: Josiah Wampatuck, “Deed for Land near Blue Hills Given by Josiah Wampatuck to the Crown of England.” 4 October, 1666. Edited by Paul Grant-Costa et. al, Yale Indian Papers Project, Yale University: http://hdl.handle.net/10079/digcoll/1018378 67 Augustine Jones, Nicholas Upsall, 8.

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death, his son Charles Josiah and his daughter Abigail, with their descendants, continued to live on their family’s lands until the mid-twentieth century.68 However, it seems likely that Wompatuck did meet at least one other Q ­ uaker wandering through the woods. In 1658, Josiah Coale, a Quaker missionary passed by Wompatuck’s headquarters. Describing his journey to George Bishop, Coale writes that when he was travelling “nere Plimmouth Colony,” he came to the “Indian Sagamores hous.” As Coale writes, the sachem had clearly encountered Quakers before. When Coale arrived, the sachem showed his familiarity with the various English settlers explaining that “the English men did not Lóue quakers, but…quakers are ­honest men and doe noe harme.” Yet, despite his knowledge of the various groups of English settlers in the region, the sachem is not impressed by the Englishman’s power. Rather, he informs Coale that “this is noe English mans sea nor Land and quakers shall Com here and welcom.”69 This powerful statement not only illustrates the sachem’s sovereignty, but also shows his adept diplomacy. As the established authority in the region, the sachem decides who receives hospitality and negotiations are done on his terms. While Coale, like Upshall, leaves the Sagamore unnamed, it seems clear that the sachem Coale meets is Wompatuck. In both narratives, the location is the same and the actions of the sachem are consistent. Placed alongside of one another, these two accounts give us a picture of a sachem who is neither savage, nor vanishing. Rather they point to a sachem acting out of his diplomatic responsibilities as he controls his lands and protects his people. In both of these accounts, we can see Wompatuck actively approaching the arriving Quakers from his position as a leader. In doing so, the sachem asserts his authority as he offers the Quakers the possibility of establishing diplomatic ties that have the potential to benefit both parties. The story of Upshall’s meeting with the Indian Prince is deeply embedded in the national narratives of native people. Native diplomatic practices, native relationship to land, and indigenous communal roles can all be glimpsed in the stories told by both Upshall and Coale. As such, these early narratives of encounter between Quakers and native people are not evidence that native people were making way for the Quakers, but instead that they were making room. Naming the Indian Prince changes the narrative function of the story. The repeated tale of the friendly Quaker and the welcoming American Indian relies on maintaining the anonymity of the Indians involved. As a nameless figure, 68 69

Russell Herbert Gardner, “Last Royal Dynasty of the Massachusetts,” 19–21. My thanks to Geoffrey Plank and Evan Haefeli for directing me to Coale’s account. Josiah Coale, “A Letter of Josiah Coale, 1658.” Bulletin of Friends’ Historical Society of Philadelphia 6:1 (1914), 4.

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the Indian Prince is described only through the pens of the Quaker authors. In the logic of firsting narratives, the Prince functions primarily to condone and even encourage a Quaker presence. However, in restoring Wompatuck’s name, we also restore a voice. This restoration transforms the story from one of firsts to one of indigenous persistence. It also challenges us to rethink the larger narrative that has been told about Quakers and American Indians. The story of early New England is one of complex interactions between multiple nations. All of whom, legitimately or not, were attempting to assert their rights to land, religion, and sovereignty within the space of colonial New England. At the same time as the Quakers were striving to set themselves up in opposition to the Puritans, the Indigenous nations in New England were endeavoring to negotiate with settlers to maintain their rights and protect their communities. In this light, it was not only, or even necessarily, the kindness and meekness of the wandering Quakers that attracted the sympathy of the New England Indians. Rather, native leaders like Wompatuck may have been drawn to the Quakers because they represented opportunities to make new alliances and friendships that would secure access to Indigenous lands and continue Indigenous spiritual practices based on kinship, community, and reciprocity. Bibliography Ayer, Oliver Roberts. History of the Military Company of the Massachusetts, Now Called The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts. 1637–1888. Volume 1. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1895. Baldwin, Meredith Weddle. Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century. London: Oxford University Press, 2000. Bishop, George. New England Judged, Not By Man’s, but the Spirit of the Lord. Part 1. London: Printed for Robert Wilson in Martins Le Grand, 1661. Besse, Joseph. A Collection of the Sufferings of the People Called Quakers. London: Printed and Sold by Luke Hinde, 1753. Brooks, Lisa. The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Brooks, Lisa. “Turning the Looking Glass on King Philip’s War: Locating American Literature in Native Space,” American Literary History 25, no. 4 (2013): 718–750. Charles, I, A Copy of the Kings Majesties Charter for Incorporating the Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New-England in America, 1628. Boston: Printed for S. Green, for Benj. Harris at the London Coffee House, 1689.

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Coale, Josiah. “A Letter of Josiah Coale, 1658.” Bulletin of Friends’ Historical Society of Philadelphia 6, no. 1 (1914): 2–5. Cogley, Richard. John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians Before King Philip’s War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Cotton, Jr., John. “The Missionary Journal of John Cotton Jr.” Ed. Len Travers. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Third Series. 109 (1997): 52–101. Drake, Samuel G. The Aboriginal Races of North America: Comprising Biographical Sketches of Eminent Individuals, and an historical Account of the different tribes, from the first discovery of the continent to the present period. Philadelphia, C. Desilver, 1859. Eliot, John. “A Late and Further Manifestation of the Progress of the Gospel” (1655). The Eliot Tracts. Ed. Michael P Clark. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 300–320. Fox, George. A Journal or historical account of the life, travels, sufferings, Christian experiences and labour of love in the work of the ministry of George Fox Volume 1. Edited by Wilson Armistead. London: W. and F.G. Cash, 1853. Fox, George. The Secret Workes of a Cruel People Made Manifest. London, 1659. Gardner, Russell Herbert. “Last Royal Dynasty of the Massachusetts.” Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society 57, no. 1 (1996): 18–34. Jones, Augustine. Nicholas Upsall. Boston: Press of David Clapp & Son, 1880. Kennedy, Lawrence W. Planning the City Upon a Hill: Boston Since 1630. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1992. Hinds, Hilary. George Fox and Early Quaker Culture. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2011. Holder, Charles Francis. The Quakers in Great Britain and America: The Religious and Political History of the Society of Friends from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century. New York: The Neuner Company, 1913. Howard, Joy. “Spirited into America: Narratives of possession, 1650—1850.” Purdue University, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2011. Lee, Sidney, Ed. Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, Vol. 41. London: Smith, Elder, & Co, 1895. Longfellow, Henry Wordsworth. The New-England Tragedies. Boston: Ticknor and Fields,1869. Morgan, Edmund. Roger Williams: The Church and the State, 2nd Ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. Norton, Humphrey, New-England’s Ensigne. London, Printed by T.L. for G. Calvert, 1659. Oberg, Michael Leroy. Uncas: First of the Mohegans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. O’Brien, Jean. Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

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Pestana, Carla Gardina. “The City upon a Hill Under Siege: The Puritan Perception of the Quaker Threat to Massachusetts Bay, 1656–1661.” The New England Quarterly 56:3 (1993): 323–353. Pestana, Carla Gardina. Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Peters, Kate. Print Culture and the Early Quakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pulsipher, Jenny Hale. Subjects Unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Sewel, William. The History and Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers Intermixed with Several Remarkable Occurrences. London: Printed and Sold by the Assigns of J. Sowle, 1722. Shurtleff, Nathaniel B. Editor. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England: Volume III, 1644–1657. Boston: From the Press of William White, 1854. Wampatuck, Josiah. “Deed for Land near Blue Hills Given by Josiah Wampatuck to the Crown of England.” 4 October, 1666. Edited by Paul Grant-Costa et. al. Yale Indian Papers Project, Yale University: http://hdl.handle.net/10079/digcoll/1018378 Weimer, Adrian Chastain. Martyrs’ Mirror: Persecution and Holiness in Early New England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Whitefield, Henry, Ed. “The Light Appearing more and more towards the Perfect Day” (1651). The Eliot Tracts. Ed. Michael P Clark. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 171–209. Williams, Roger. A Key Into the Language of America, (1643). Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1936. Williams, Roger. Letters of Roger Williams 1632–1682. Ed. John Russell Bartlett. Providence: Printed for the Narragansett Club, 1874. Whittier, John Greenleaf. The King’s Missive, Mabel Martin, and Later Poems. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1881. Winthrop, John. Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649 Volume II. Ed. Richard S Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1996.

Chapter 4

“The Calamett, a Sure Bond and Seal of Peace”: Native-Pennsylvania Treaties as Religious Discourse Scott M. Wert On June 14, 1715, several sachems of the tribes living along the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers convened a solemn, religious, and ancient custom. The remarkable display was led by Delaware sachem Sassoonan, who began by “opening” the “Calamet with great Ceremony,” his animated movements orchestrated by singing and the shaking of rattles. As the music died out, Sassoonan raised the large, impressive tobacco pipe in the air. An earlier account described the object as “a long Indian pipe…with a stone head, a wooden or cane shaft & feathers fixt to it like wings, with other ornaments.” Sassoonan proclaimed that he and his people had brought the sacred object now in his hands as an offering to all those present that were ready to make and extend peace. After everyone in the circle had partaken of the tobacco, the ritual specialist retired the venerated pipe “with the same ceremony.” Rising to speak, Sassoonan declared “that the Calamett, the bond of peace, which they had carried to all the nations round” was now brought to this place, because “it was a sure bond and seal of Peace amongst them.” As he and his people raised their hands up towards the sky, the sachem begged “the God of Heaven” to witness this spiritual act, proclaiming that it would create a “firm peace” between all present.1 Native ceremonies of this kind occurred throughout the Northeast during important councils—rituals that expressed a reliance on the power of tobacco, wampum, gifts, and impressive speeches. This account of a Delaware ceremony, however, did not take place in a traditional lodge or woodland scene, but in Philadelphia’s own courthouse during what historians usually refer to as an Indian “treaty.” Christians in attendance, including Pennsylvania’s Governor Charles Gookin and Quaker Secretary James Logan, gave no hint of offense, and every indication suggests that all parties left quite pleased with the outcome. This was, in fact, the third record of Pennsylvania officials joining in a 1 Samuel Hazard, Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, from the Organization to the Termination of the Proprietary Government, (Philadelphia: Joseph Severns & Co., 1852), 2:546, 2:599, hereafter mpcp.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_005

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Sacred Pipe ritual with Natives in eight years.2 Like so many other treaty meetings, councils, and conferences, this encounter was filled with objects and rites sacred to Native Americans for recreating Native cosmologies and facilitating practitioners’ pleas to guardian spirits—other-than-human powers—to take notice of what was happening, and to give necessary help for success in life and the afterlife. Much ado has been made of the Quaker religion and its importance in creating and maintaining peaceful relations with Lenape, Susquehannock, and Iroquois Indians. But far less attention has been paid to the importance of Native religion in those same processes. This essay calls attention to one type of ceremony that was used by Natives during the early decades of Quaker Pennsylvania—the use of a large smoking-pipe or calumet—found in the treaty accounts of 1707, 1712, and 1715.3 More commonly found in the Upper Mississippi and Great Lakes regions, the use of this particular calumet was spread by the Iroquois to Indians allied to Pennsylvania. Calumet ceremonialism was a key strategy used by the Iroquois to facilitate expansion and influence among refugee and Delaware groups and to redefine those relationships. Such examples call into question the assumption that, during the period of 1670 to 1740, “traditional religious forms” were maintained by Natives but with less confidence “as morale generally” declined.4 In reality, Native religions were not merely maintained but were actively adapting to the meet the changing circumstances of coexistence in Pennsylvania. Calumet ceremonies between Algonquians, Iroquoians, and Pennsylvania officials held a special significance for its role in shaping relations between the three groups. After a brief background, this essay will explore the three treaties and discuss some of the meanings found in tobacco ceremonies before unpacking the larger significance of those events. While Dutch, Swedish, and English colonizers competed with each other for the rights to settle and trade in the region, the Delaware, Susquehannock and Iroquois were contending with each other too, causing them to readjust their relationships with each other.5 As Iroquoian influence spread southward, Pennsylvania was ­incorporated into 2 Sacred Pipe is the term used by Jordan Paper and others to describe the various religious ceremonies connected with tobacco; Jordan Paper, Offering Smoke: The Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion (Moscow: University of Nebraska Press, 1988). 3 Scott M. Wert is a Ph.D. candidate at Lehigh University; the author’s dissertation traces the influences of Native religion in the Pennsylvania region from 1630 to 1755. 4 Anthony F.C. Wallace, Revitalizations and Mazeways: Essays on Culture Change, ed., Robert S. Grumet (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 39. 5 C.A. Weslager, “The Nanticoke Indians in Early Pennsylvania History,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Oct., 1943), 345.

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Native-Native councils which were increasingly run according to Iroquoian rules. Besides demonstrating the importance of Native religion in cross cultural relations, these calumet councils help us understand a major shift taking place in the relations between the Delaware, Susquehannock, and Iroquois Indians—a shift that was in part, initiated and manifested using Native religious ceremonies and objects. 1 Background From the first colonization in the late 1620s up to the 1680s, Lenape or Delaware Indians astutely handled the limited numbers of Dutch and Swedish immigrants in the Delaware River Valley, negotiating land use, trade, and settling disputes.6 They were not alone, however, because during the 1630s, the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks warred against the Lenape to access trade with Europeans too. Soon both cooperatively managed settlers on the river using religious ceremonies and sacred objects to ritually incorporate the settlers into their worlds.7 One common Lenape ceremony, for example, was an energetic event called a kintekayen by the Dutch, and cantico by the English, both variants of a Lenape word kantka meaning to dance.8 Such rituals were used to seal agreements, celebrate alliances, or make crucial decisions. The most 6 For a thorough study of strategies used by the Lenape to retain autonomy during this prePenn period, see Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 7 The Susquehannocks were an Iroquoian group that had separated from the Iroquois before European contact. Historic and archaeological evidence shows that by 1630, the Susquehannocks were already controlling the flow of European goods from the upper Susquehanna to the Chesapeake Bay. Karen Ordahl Kupperman writes, “Historians disagree on the nature of their [Delaware] relationship with the Susquehannocks. We know that the two had been at war before the settlement of New Sweden [1638], but had made some sort of peaceful arrangement. Controversy centers on the nature of this arrangement. Some believe it was a clientage relationship, with the Susquehannocks having established a degree of overlordship over the strategically located Delawares, while others see it as a peace between equal and independent peoples.” Karen Ordahl Kupperman, “Scandinavian Colonists Confront the New World” New Sweden in America, eds., Carol E. Hoffecker, Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara E. Benson, (London: Associated University Presses, 1995), 97. For example, C.A. Weslager supports the former thesis, while Francis Jennings promotes the latter. 8 Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Volumes xx–xxi Delaware Papers (English Period) (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1977), 17–19; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 126; Amy C. Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 29; Daniel G. Brinton and Rev. Albert Seqaqkind Anthony, eds., A Lenâpé-English Dictionary (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1888), 40.

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detailed record of one was penned by Quaker John Richardson who witnessed the Delaware “perform their Cantico or Worship” at the climax of a treaty held with William Penn at Pennsbury in 1701.9 One intriguing example occurred in 1671, and demonstrates how Native religion could shape colonial relations. Having lost his sister to disease, Delaware Tashiowycam expressed his grief by declaring that “the Manetto hath kill’d my Sister, & I will go & kill the Christians,” which he did.10 Colonial pressure to find the perpetrator resulted in the Delaware calling a “Kintikoy to bee held,” and, “in the midst of their Mirth,” a sachem shouted out a revelation that one of their own people should execute the culprit. As a result, Tashiowycam was found and informed of his people’s decision, to which he submitted with little objection.11 The Susquehannocks held a different role at treaty meetings. Between 1650 and 1675, Susquehannock sachems often led treaty meetings styling themselves as “mediators” for the Lenape, Swedes, and Dutch. Such claims were backed up with promises of military protection which would have been understood by Natives in terms of access to religious power. Indeed, besides controlling the flow of valuable furs from the west, the Susquehannocks had a long reputation of military prowess against the Iroquois, Marylanders, and Virginians. The Delaware, by contrast, seldom chose all-out war. That these two dominant tribes in the region held opposing yet complementary roles corresponded with the dichotomy of Native life and the cosmological beliefs of Eastern Woodlands Natives. As the seventeenth century progressed, however, Delawares and Susquehannocks expressed fears of an English invasion into the region. So, when New York assumed control of the Delaware Valley after 1664, English colonists were regularly picked off by nearby Natives throughout the first decade, a sign of unusually high anxiety in the region. This tense atmosphere changed when William Penn and his Quakers arrived in the 1680s, providing the region’s Natives with very different opportunities. Their more favorable perceptions of Natives were staples of the promotional literature for the colony.12 9

John Richardson, “An Account of the Life of John Richardson,” Extracts from Journals and other Writings of Members of the Society of Friends, Vol. 3 (Lindfield, 1832), 240–245. 10 Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789; Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties: 1629–1737, Vol. 1, (Washington D.C.: University Publications of America, 1979), 35–36, hereafter eaid; John B Linn, William Hegle, eds., Pennsylvania Archives, Second Series, 5:601; 7:741–742; B. Fernow, Documents Relating to the History of the Dutch and Swedish Settlements on the Delaware River (Albany, The Argus Company, 1877), 12:484–485. 11 Kent, eaid, 36. 12 Examples of promotional literature that contained favorable portrayals of Pennsylvania’s Indians include: William Penn, “Letter to the Free Society of Traders,” (1683), and A Letter From Doctor More, (1687); Thomas Budd, Good Order Established in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, (1685); Francis Daniel Pastorius, Geographical Description of Pennsylvania, (1700).

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To the north, however, Native competition for European trade had taken a much deadlier path. Beginning in the 1640s, the Iroquois, or Five Nations as the English called them, became embroiled in the Beaver Wars (1645–1687), a prolonged conflict precipitated in part by intense competition over the trade in furs for European guns and goods. One offshoot of that conflict was a protracted mourning war between the Susquehannocks and the Seneca, the western-most member of the Five Nations.13 While their reputation for warfare became legend against the French and Indians of Canada, the Iroquois were consistently humbled by the Susquehannocks. But around 1675, fortunes changed as the Iroquois sent Susquehannocks fleeing south into Maryland where they fell into the hands of brutal militia who intentionally murdered five of their sachems. William Penn knew all about it when he confronted a Maryland official a few years later, charging his colonial neighbors with betraying the Susquehannocks “out of their Lives.”14 That the Iroquois saw the reduction of the Susquehannocks as extending their spiritual power is evidenced by the fact that, shortly after in 1677, the Iroquois showed up along the Delaware at a treaty at Shackamaxon, five years before Penn’s treaty, looking to “fetch” some of the Susquehannocks to take north to Iroquoia. With many if not all of their sachems dead, the Susquehannocks had become ceremonially impotent, never again to wear the mantle of mediator. As a Susquehannock remnant resettled at Conestoga Creek (they came to be called Conestogas), the Delaware took advantage of the more favorable Indian-Quaker relationship. Without Susquehannock oversight, Delaware Indians executed a flurry of land deeds with the newly-arriving Quakers in the east. Refugee Indians began relocating in Pennsylvania too, mostly along the Susquehanna, including the Shawnee in the 1690s, followed in the early 1700s by a variety of Potomac and Chesapeake Indians later referred to as Nanticokes. Within this context three calumet councils were performed, as transient nations appealed to Conestoga and to Pennsylvania for safer places to live.15 What role the Iroquois would occupy in the region remained to be seen.16 13

14 15 16

The term mourning war refers to reciprocal killings between Indian groups in order to regain spiritual power lost from deaths due to warfare and outbreaks of disease. Daniel K. Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); William N. Fenton, The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 245. Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984), 140. The Nanticokes were comprised of Ganawese, Piscataway, and Conoy Indians. Weslager, “The Nanticoke Indians,” 345–355. Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, (Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers, 1900), 59:251; 60:173. The Iroquoian military victory over the

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With casualties mounting at the turn of the century, the Iroquois Confederacy adopted their famous Policy of Neutrality in 1701, but not before they had extended their sphere of influence far to the south of their original homeland.17 It was during the extended councils with the western Indians at Montreal that the Iroquois were exposed to repeated uses of the calumet of peace.18 Before this, the most common Iroquoian method of ritualized tobacco use was prolonged smoking by individuals before diplomatic proceedings because “they say that good thoughts come from smoking.”19 But Native religions possessed an adaptable creativity in coping with the problems of everyday life. New sources of spiritual power could be passed on by those who already possessed such skills. As warfare slowly decelerated, calumet ceremonies became a crucial religious practice in the repositioning of the Iroquois in the Northeast. Besides their use in the treaties held in Montreal, the Iroquois received two impressive calumets as presents in 1684 and in 1696. In 1709, they additionally received “two large calumets to cover their dead.” As Brett Rushforth maintains, although the western Indians’ practice of the calumet was linked to both war, peace, and the taking or presenting of captives, the Iroquois continued to perceive the ritual use of tobacco as signifying welcome and peace. Despite the variations in meaning, tobacco and pipes were used by both as ritual objects within diplomatic contexts. After 1701, the Iroquois began using the calumet ceremony to spread their influence into Pennsylvania.20

17

18

19 20

S­ usquehannocks and its consequences has been disputed. Scholars that support the view of Iroquoian conquest include Iroquois historian Daniel K. Richter, Susquehannock archaeologist Barry C. Kent, and ethnohistorian Elizabeth Tooker. Francis Jennings is most skeptical due to his intense focus on the discrepancies and omissions found in European documents. Jon Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534–1701 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010). In this lengthy work, Parmenter argues that “through strategic uses of mobility,” the Iroquois created a vast “interconnected indigenous polity” of innovative, new communities utilizing Iroquois values and spatial concepts grounded in the longhouse. In concept, I agree with his thesis. However I argue that at the core of their national self-concept were the many ancient ceremonies that defined that worldview and accessed orenda necessary for success in attaining food, health, hunting, warfare, and diplomacy. William N. Fenton, The Iroquois Eagle Dance: An Offshoot of the Calumet Dance. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, (Washington, D.C., 1953), 156–58; Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 248–249. Pierre Margry, Deconvertes et Etablissements des Francais, Voyage de M. le Comte de Frontenac au lac Ontario, (Paris, 1875), 212. W.M. Beauchamp, “Correspondence,” The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal, Volume 4, (Chicago: Jameson & Morse, 1881–82), 32829; Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance,

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The Calumet Councils in Quaker Pennsylvania

On June 29, 1707, Governor John Evans arrived at the Indian town of Dekanoagah after receiving a message from some Seneca Indians living at Conestoga that “several strange Indians were amongst” them. As allies of Pennsylvania, Indians were obligated to inform the province when “strange” Indians appeared in the region, so Evans sat down with Shawnee, Seneca, Conoy, and Nanticokes to see what they wanted. Before any serious discussion could begin, “an Indian presented” to the governor and his men “a large pipe with Tobacco, out of which every one smoakt.” That done, a Nanticoke spoke up and told the governor that they had waited ten days for his arrival and were “extreamly glad” he was there. Everyone was now ritually prepared for the business at hand.21 As perhaps the earliest reference to a calumet ceremony during a NativePennsylvania conference, the universal importance of tobacco ceremonialism in North America had been in place for untold centuries. “If there is one aspect unique to aboriginal religion in the Americas,” points out Jordan Paper, “it is the ritual use of tobacco.”22 Indians believed that tobacco possessed special qualities that allowed communication with the spiritual world—a world that Bernard Bailyn describes as “multitudinous, densely populated by active, sentient and sensitive spirits, spirits with consciences, memories, and purposes, that surrounded them, instructed them, impinged on their lives at every turn.”23 This supernatural potency, both mysterious and unexplainable, was often referred to by Algonquian-speakers as manitou, and orenda by Iroquoians.24 Native practitioners ritually used tobacco in myriad ways to solicit help from forces constantly able to shape their lives—both for good or evil—to attain 247–48; Donald J. Blakeslee, “The Origin and Spread of the Calumet Ceremony,” American Antiquity, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Oct., 1981), 759–758; Fenton, The Iroquois Eagle Dance, 156–58. There is a debate regarding the origin and spread of the calumet ceremony. This chapter does not enter that debate, except to maintain that it was native, pre-contact in origin, and that its increased use spread from the Iroquois into Pennsylvania signaling a crucial shift in relations between Native groups. 21 mpcp, 2:386–87. 22 Paper, Offering Smoke, 3. 23 Lewis H. Morgan, League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois (Rochester: Sage and Brother, 1851), 164; Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600–1675, (New York: Knopf, 2012), 3–5. 24 William Jones, “The Algonkin Manitou,” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 18, No. 70 (Jul. – Sep., 1905), 183–190; J.N.B. Hewitt, “Orenda and a Definition of Religion,” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1902), 33–46; Jace Weaver, ed, Native American Religious Identity: Unforgotten Gods (New York: Orbis Books, 1998), 27–28.

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“success, happiness, and long life.”25 Such effects were evident in Dekanoagah in 1707. Nanticokes admitted their nervousness as they awaited the governor but expressed relief once they had partaken of the tobacco with their Pennsylvanian brothers. Native nations that had been relocating in Pennsylvania did so with a great deal of anxiety towards the Five Nations who were exerting their presence in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Iroquois delegates attended at least seven treaty meetings in the region between 1677 and 1727 while numbers of their people lived in various towns along the Susquehanna.26 By the time of the 1707 council, most Pennsylvania Indians were publicly deferring to the Iroquois. Turbulent times required the calumet of peace (Figure 4.1). Native tobacco was a stronger variety than what is used today, sometimes able to produce “dissociative states” of mind. The most compelling way of appropriating the power found within this plant was by smoking it, inducing what Daniel Richter describes as “a state of mind that opened one to supernatural forces; smoking, then, was not just a form of relaxation, but, in appropriate

Figure 4.1 The “form” of a manitou inscribed by a Delaware Native on the door of a colonial house in New Sweden, c.1700. Tobias E Biörck, The Planting of the Swedish Church in America, 1731; translated and edited by Ira Oliver Nothstein, (Rock Island: ­Augustana College Library, 1943), 33

25 26

P. Radin, “Religion of the North American Indians,” Journal of American Folklore 27 (1914), 337. See Descriptive Treaty Calendar in The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, Francis Jennings ed., et. al. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985).

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ceremonial contexts, a religious act.”27 Altered states of mind were culturally appropriate for Native societies where dreams and visions were desirable for gaining religious knowledge and communicating with “wonderful powers.”28 Nowhere was the religious act of smoking tobacco more important than during large councils, where entire groups entered into ceremonially proper, communal rites as they persuaded friends to negotiate alliances, strangers to trade, and enemies to end blood feuds. This was exactly the aim of the Nanticokes. The year before, Nanticokes, Conestogas, and Shawnee had journeyed to Philadelphia requesting a meeting with Governor Evans and his officials. Conestoga sachem Andaggyjunguagh laid in front of Evans “a very large Wampum Belt of 21 Rowes,” white with three black hands. Wampum was also an indispensable sacred object believed to have the power to carry crucial messages to enemies and strangers, to end blood feuds, and to heal pain caused by death.29 The meaning of this belt, he explained, was that it had been sent by the Onondagas as “a pledge of peace” to the Nanticokes, when the Iroquois made them “tributaries.” Fearing ­eminent danger, the Nanticokes readied their “pledge of peace” before heading to Conestoga. Once in Philadelphia, they revealed that they had left an identical belt at Conestoga and were planning to leave this one in Philadelphia, thus obligating Pennsylvania to present it to the Five Nations when they arrived. The surprised governor convened a meeting of his officials spending a considerable time that day and the next trying to figure out “what might be intended by the Indians leaving that Belt” in town.30 Although Pennsylvania balked, the belt remained in Philadelphia. Now at the calumet council of 1707, the Nanticokes brought twenty belts of wampum to take to the Five Nations, and their uneasiness had not dissipated. Once encouraged by the governor, the Conestoga sachems did an unusual thing. They ordered their interpreter to speak to the Nanticokes in English:

27 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 28. 28 Dean R. Snow, Iroquoia: The Development of a Native World (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003) 54; Elisabeth Tooker, Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern ­Woodlands (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 16–17; Peter C. Mancall’s Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America, (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1995). 29 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 32–38, 57–58; Anthony F.C. Wallace, Revitalizations and Mazeways: Essays on Culture Change (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), Robert S. Grumet, ed. 32–36; Michael K. Foster, “Another Look at the Function of Wampum”; William N. Fenton, “Structure, Continuity, and Change in the Process of Iroquois Treaty Making,” Francis Jennings, et. al., The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985), 3–36, 99–114. 30 mpcp, 2:246–47; James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 111–113.

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Your are going to the Oanondagoes; be sure keep on your way; many may tell you several things to fright you, and that they are great men, and you will be killed. Yet keep on your way and believe them not, for you will find the King of the five nations a very great one, and as good a king any amongst the Indians.31 The firm, unyielding tone of the interpreter clearly communicated how the Nanticokes should act on their journey north. In the world of Native diplomacy, the Nanticokes were to demonstrably trust objects with “wonderful powers” which symbolized peace and provided safety. On May 19, 1712, Governor Charles Gookin and his council rode out to Edward Farmar’s house outside of Philadelphia to meet Delaware Indians. The fourteen or so Natives there had requested to meet with Pennsylvania’s governor before “going with their Belts to the five nations.” Through an interpreter, Scollitchy addressed the governor saying, “many years ago” they had been made “Tributaries to the Mingoes or 5 nations.” Now they intended to visit them but thought it best to council first with Pennsylvania’s sachem. The Natives carefully laid their “tribute” on the floor, an impressive thirty-two belts of wampum. Next to it they laid a “long Indian pipe called the Calamet, with a stone head, a wooden or cane shaft and feathers fixt to it like wings, and other ornaments.”32 Scollitchy went on to say that, “This pipe” had been given to them by the Five Nations, “who had subdued them & obliged them to be their tributaries.” Their responsibility, explained the Delaware, was for his people to keep the calumet, and “that at all times thereafter, upon shewing this pipe where they Came they might be known to be friends and subjects of the five Nations, and be received by them when they Came amongst them.” The sachems then proceeded, ritually “opening” each belt, announcing the “purpose” and “intention” of each one. The scribe noted that the “last 24 were all sent by women, the Indians Reckoning the paying of Tribute becomes none but women & children.”33 This second appearance of a calumet in treaty records was occasioned by another episode of Indians carrying large amounts of wampum to the Iroquois while publicly declaring that the Iroquois had “subdued” them. A mission like this was fundamentally dangerous if religious strategies failed to result in the adoption of foreign messengers by Iroquois hosts. Such men would be treated like captive warriors and should expect the worst. Their expedition, therefore, required careful preparation and powerful objects. While the first reference to the calumet had little detail, this second reference contains significant 31 32 33

mpcp, 2:387. mpcp, 2:546. mpcp, 2:546–549.

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details of its origin, construction, and purpose. The appearance of this pipe was elaborate enough to catch the attention of the scribe, and its description is remarkably similar to others in the historical record. In 1673, Father Marquette saw two such pipes along the upper Mississippi. It is fashioned from a red stone, polished like marble, and bored in such a manner that one end serves as a receptacle for the tobacco, while the other fits into the stem; this is a stick two feet long, as thick as an ordinary cane, and bored through the middle. It is ornamented with the heads and necks of various birds, whose plumage is very beautiful.34 Thomas Campanius Holm’s Description of New Sweden (1702) records a similar calumet as well. His grandfather was Johan Campanius, a Lutheran minister of New Sweden in the 1640s before it became Pennsylvania.35 Almost all the Indian nations in this northern part of America make use of a token of peace and friendship, with which they confirm all that their councils have determined upon, whether it be war, peace, or any other important business. What they call the calumet is a tobacco pipe of red, white, or black colour; the bowl of which is of a fine red, well polished stone. This pipe is made of a pretty strong reed, three feet and a half long, and adorned with feathers of various colors, and with women’s hair woven in various manners. To this pipe are fixed two wings… When they have made any contract or treaty, either with the Christians or other Indians, they give them the calumet to smoke, which finally seals the agreement, as they believe: if any one should afterwards break it, he would be visited by some great misfortune.36 Additional evidence of calumet use by the Delaware was left by Peter Lindeström, an engineer sent by the Swedish Company to create maps and help build fortifications for New Sweden. Lindeström kept records of his stay in 1654–55, which contained a detailed account of the First Nations along the Delaware River. Included in his work is an illustration of a Lenape f­amily 34 Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59:131. 35 Holm clearly used some details found in an earlier description left by Father Louis Hennepin in 1683, who like Marquette had contact with Illinois Indians. However, there is separate evidence that calumets were familiar to the Delaware. Holm may have wanted to add details that were perhaps missing in his grandfather’s accounts. Either way, the 1712 calumet had much in common with others witnessed at various times and places. 36 Thomas Campanius Holm, Description of New Sweden, Now Called, by the English, Pennsylvania, in America, (Philadelphia: McCarty & Davis, 1702), 134.

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and their tobacco pipes which were large enough to use as walking sticks (Figure 4.2).37

Figure 4.2 Delaware Indians holding tobacco pipes “an ell in length.” “Delaware Indian Family,” New York Public Library, Digital Collections. Thomas Campanius Holm, Description of the Province of New Sweden, 1702; Reprint translated by Peter S. Du Ponceau, (Philadelphia: McCarty & Davis, 1834) 37

Peter Lindeström, Geographia Americae with An Account of the Delaware Indians: 1654– 1656, trans., Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: The Swedish Colonial Society, 1925); Jordan Paper remarks that this illustration was the earliest depicting a keel pipe in America. Paper, Offering Smoke, 83.

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A number of the calumet’s elements held symbolic importance and deserve some attention. Archaeological studies show that the most innovative change in Susquehannock and Seneca religious practices by mid-seventeenth century was the introduction of Catlinite or Red Pipestone from Wisconsin and Minnesota. Such rare, beautiful materials were used for masks in the forms of humans, turtles, and wolves, with some having the back carved out to hold the sacred tobacco. Most often it was used to craft beautiful pipes used in tobacco ceremonies and were undoubtedly seen as powerful objects able “to arouse the compassion and pity of the spirit.”38 Native conflict that arose over access to long-distance trade routes was not mere “raiding,” because strong religious forces were central to competition among Native Americans. Just as men appealed to spirits for success during long-distance hunting excursions, the same was true for long-distance trade in rare materials. Such wealth accumulation in Native societies, whether it was ordained for redistribution or to be utilized for communal purposes, was regarded as beneficial to everyone in the village and contributed to the social, physical, and spiritual well-being of society. In this sense, wealth “was a kind of medicine.” For traditional peoples, rare items such as calumets fell into this category because spatial distance was spiritual power.39 Many aspects of the calumet signified a posture of defenselessness necessary to preclude war. The stem (French calumet or “reed”), was the largest part of the pipe, three to five feet long, and was possibly crafted to be a “symbolic arrow.”40 Native groups sometimes greeted European newcomers by ­ceremonially handing them arrows, which signified a vulnerability in ­allowing ­strangers into their village. An arrow that brought success to a warrior was considered to possess manitou, but so too would arrows offered in peace. ­Offering the ­calumet-pipe as a symbolic weapon would have simultaneously ­communicated the power and vulnerability of the one hosting the

38 39 40

Barry C. Kent, Susquehanna’s Indians (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1984), 111–135, 145, 173, 407; Åke Hultkrantz, The Religions of the American Indians, trans. Monica Setterwall, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 81. Mary W. Helms, Craft and the Kingly Ideal: Art, Trade, and Power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 135–138, 187–189, 211–214. Lindeström stated Delaware pipes in the 1650s were an “ell” in length, somewhere around a yard or more in length. Peter Lindeström, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians, trans., Amandus Johnson, (Philadelphia: The Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 197.

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treaty.41 This special code of influence produced by communal smoking may have been believed to have the effect of disarming all those involved.42 Other diplomatic “protocols” reaffirm this symbolism. The seated ensemble, which is so often in treaty records, was a “deeply significant” symbol of peace which communicated the need for various groups to connect with each other.43 This act echoes those of Native women who, when overtaken by an enemy, simply sat down rather than adopt a defensive, warlike posture. As the first seated, sachems demonstrated their spiritual power as they risked injury at the hands of those whom he had invited. If all were seated in a circle or semi-circle, all were weakened, becoming non-aggressive equals. At this point the calumet-pipe might be placed in the middle, as the Delaware did at Farmar’s house, while those seated would sing or chant songs to manitou, who, if aroused or pleased, could help accomplish the task at hand. Participants sometimes placed totems representing ­individuals’ manitou in the middle, blowing smoke over them as gift and enticement. In this way they acknowledged help they had received in the past while enticing manitou for favors before being seated.44 Special emblems attached to the calumet held conveyed meanings too. Feathers and wings symbolized the spirits’ ability to travel through time and space as Jacques Marquette witnessed when an Illinois chief made his calumet dance, presenting it to the sun and the earth, and spreading “its wings, as if about to fly.” The woman’s hair tied to the stem is especially suggestive of the notion of extending peaceful familial relationships. Women were emblematic of society where men were absent for long periods of time. Village life revolved around women who gave birth, reared children, cultivated the fields, and produced a majority of crafts. Performing the calumet ritual, seated at the center of the village in the presence of outsiders, allowed different groups to spiritually join with one another as brothers of the same family.45

41

Robert L. Hall, An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual, (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1997), 1–4. 42 Hall, An Archaeology of the Soul, 3–5; Holm, Description of New Sweden, 134. 43 Amy Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 1–3. 44 Thwaites, Jesuit Relations Vol. 59, 135; Father Joseph Lafitau, Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times, 1724; trans., William N. Fenton and Elizabeth L. Moore, (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1974), 2:178–179. 45 Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59:135; Lafitau, Customs of the American Indians, 2:178–179; John Bierhorst, Four Masterworks of American Indian Literature (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974), 109.

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Communal smoking was also linked to “weeping greetings,” a welcoming ceremony where Indians wept over their guests, saliva and all, something French visitors did not appreciate. As Robert Hall describes it, the weeping greeting was actually more of an honor than it would seem because Indians did not lightly allow strangers to acquire tears, saliva, sweat, or other bodily effluvia that could be used for the purpose of black magic or witchcraft. The principle can be found worldwide among peoples who believe in magic.46 Fear of witchcraft was always an important aspect of Native religion because anyone acquiring spiritual knowledge might use those skills against other persons. Rather than being disruptive, such beliefs actually created a significant degree of social cohesion and social control.47 So, when Natives took the risk of communally smoking the same pipe, it was because they believed that the calumet had the power to weaken any secret enemies. The Delaware diplomats at the calumet ceremony in 1712, like the earlier Nanticokes, were engaged in the dangerous mission of “carrying” a significant amount of wampum belts to the Five Nations. As self-declared “tributaries,” they were clearly concerned about being ceremonially prepared and insisted on consulting with Pennsylvania before they proceeded. They also insisted upon declaring and using the gift of the Iroquois calumet. As a mission of peace, Penn’s officials were only too glad affirm that “peace & Love might reign among us,” and that the Delaware should make that clear to the Five Nations as well. The third account of the calumet’s use occurred on June 14, 1715, as Delaware and Schuylkill Indians met with Governor Charles Gookin and his council at Philadelphia’s courthouse. Delaware leaders had been hearing “murmurs” among their own people, directed presumably towards Pennsylvanians. So, the Indians journeyed to Philadelphia and requested a conference. When the congregation was seated, Sassoonan “opened” the “Calamet with great Ceremony” and with “Rattles and songs” before offering it to everyone present, first to all of the “English there mett” and then to “all his Indians.” He then “with the same ceremony” put up the calumet again. Sassoonan then “rose & spoke” to the governor saying,

46 Hall, Archaeology of the Soul, 3–5. 47 Alfred A. Cave, “The Failure of the Shawnee Prophet’s Witch-Hunt,” Ethnohistory, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Summer, 1995), 465.

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the Calamett, the bond of peace, which they had carried to all the nations round they had now brought hither; that it was a sure bond and seal of Peace amongst them and between them and us, and desired by holding up their hands, that the God of Heaven might be Witness to it, and that there might be a firm peace between them and us forever.48 Scollitchy, the sachem who had performed the calumet ceremony in 1712, was now declared “their late King.” Sassoonan, therefore, was using the same calumet gifted by the Iroquois. They had been charged with keeping the calumet and to “shew” it “at all times thereafter” to demonstrate their relationship to the Iroquois, their friendship and peace. Sassoonan confirmed that his people had kept the promise to use the calumet, declaring that “they had carried to all the nations round,” and now they brought it to Philadelphia. Referred to later in council as Olumapies, Sassoonan would be an important leader of the Delaware for the next 32 years. But for now, as a relatively young sachem, Sassoonan demonstrated his growing ability as a ritual specialist, giving one of most impressive speeches of his life. Sassoonan informed the Philadelphians that it was time to “renew the former bond of friendship that William Penn had, at his first coming, made a clear & open road all the way to the Indians.” He spoke eloquently of his desire that “the Peace that had been made should be so firm” that they should all join hands in a way that “nothing, even the greatest tree, should be able to divide them a sunder.” When Gookin failed to respond in a ceremonially proper way, the sachem simply continued saying Scollitchy had desired that they be “Joyn’d as one” so that the Indians “should be half English” as well as “half Indians.” The Delaware spoke for a long time on behalf of all the Indians on the east side of the Susquehanna, laying down with his messages three belts of wampum and eight bundles of skins. Using eloquent religious discourse, he urged his audience to continue “the same happiness” that warmed them like the sun; that they should join to dissipate any “clouds interposed between them,” and for everyone’s children to be “brought up in the same Union… from generation to generation forever.”49 Once again, this third appearance of the calumet in eight years was not brought on by any serious rupture with the colonists. With whispers of discontent, Sassoonan knew he must customarily renew their alliance with Pennsylvania to “prevent any misunderstanding.” The main issue brought up the next day was a chronic one—the Delaware felt they were “placed in the Dark,” 48 49

mpcp, 2:599–604. mpcp, 2:600.

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never knowing what they could expect to receive for goods in trade. An unsympathetic Gookin impatiently replied that “all trade is uncertain.” Sassoonan’s moving introductory monologue was perhaps wasted on a lost cause. Along with the singing and chanting, the sachem had been “putting forth his orenda, his mystical potence” to persuade and shape crucial alliances. But Gookin only charged them to use honest men with good reputations, and otherwise guard themselves against “that Destructive Liquor Rum, which robb’d” them of their goods and lives.50 Acceptable presents were exchanged but just a few days later, Sassoonan and his friends were upbraided by Gookin for a drunken spree. Rum, the governor said, made them “quite lost & become beasts.” Sassoonan shot back complaining that “they were much abused by the Quantities of Rum” brought to them by colonists. Tensions eased when the governor reassured the Delaware leaders that “very strict laws” had been enacted according to their wishes. The council ended with Natives agreeing to carry a message for the governor to the Conestogas, who had not attended the council. 3 Conclusion As a study concentrating on the impact of Native religious beliefs and practices associated with the process of treating, the appearance of three calumet ceremonies within an eight-year span is an interesting, if not unique, occurrence in the long span of Native-Pennsylvania relations. That the ritual use of tobacco was a central element of Native American religions is unquestionable, and its purpose to “offer smoke to sacred beings” must have occupied one of the highest tiers of the Indian belief system.51 Up to this point, however, its use was rarely noticed by colonial officials in the region. The outstanding qualities of the calumet caused officials to recognize its importance, and its similarities to other accounts confirms its widespread use among Natives. The fortunate recording of Native testimony regarding the calumet’s origins and purpose allows us to take a wider view outside of the localized treaty and put this religious ceremony into a broader context of religion and intra-Native relations. Why was the calumet persistently used in Pennsylvania during this time? Certainly, part of the answer lies with pressures caused by colonization and competition over trade. By the turn of the century, Indians like the Nanticokes 50 51

Hewitt, “Orenda and a Definition of Religion,” 40; mpcp, 2:602. James Warren Springer, “An Ethnohistoric Study of the Smoking Complex in Eastern North America,” Ethnohistory Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer, 1981), 217–235; Paper, Offering Smoke, 35.

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were relocating along the lower Susquehanna because of conflicts with Natives and colonists, and population loss due to disease. As newcomers they were obligated to alert Iroquois and Pennsylvania officials of their presence which reflected a growing tension and readjustment in the region due to Iroquois expansion. Calumet ceremonies were necessary to perform the “religious and diplomatic functions” that signified peaceful intent and to authenticate agreements of friendship and peace.52 In utilizing the calumet, the Iroquois also indirectly brought Pennsylvania into a closer relationship even as they incorporated refugee and Delaware nations into their sphere of influence. After their declaration of neutrality in 1701, the Iroquois used the calumet to facilitate and maintain relationships with Pennsylvania Indians, a strategy that was acceptable to the Delaware, Nanticokes, and Susquehannocks who also used similar religious ceremonies of peace and adoption to cross into other’s spaces.53 For a time, tributaries were obliged to regularly communicate with the Iroquois through copious amounts of wampum. These “wampum journeys” were important enough that Nanticoke and Delaware Indians sought out Pennsylvania’s advice regarding the messages they carried northward. According to Scollitchy in 1712, the purpose of the pipe was to provide protection when traveling among enemies. This assessment agrees with earlier accounts by Marquette, Hennepin, Holm, as well as to the consequences for those who failed to fulfill their obligations. Any violations of this Sacred Pipe ceremony, it was believed, could bring the severest repercussions from manitou: “If any one should afterwards break it, he would be visited by some great misfortune.”54 The second and third calumet ceremonies reveal more about how the Delaware were fitted into this alliance system, with the gift of the calumet being a key component in the unique relationship between the Delaware and the Five Nations. In reciprocity societies, gifting carries highly significant meanings and represents the spiritual power of the gift and the giver. The intrinsic value which the pipe already possessed actually increased when it was given to the Delaware. To keep and use the pipe as the Five Nations required was a remarkable privilege, and one in which signified the possession of a certain kind of spiritual power. As Amy Schutt points out, the role of peacekeeper was central to the identity of the Delaware. This much is clear when Sassoonan proudly continued to spread the calumet to “all the nations round,” even to 52

Springer, “An Ethnohistoric Study of the Smoking Complex in Eastern North America,” 222–23. 53 Joseph Patrick Key, “The Calumet and the Cross: Religious Encounters in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Summer 2002), 154–55. 54 Holm, Description of New Sweden, 134.

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Philadelphia. The calumet council of 1715 demonstrated that Delaware leadership possessed a new zeal and fortitude not seen for some time. During the previous three decades the Munsee and Unami-speaking Indians along the Delaware and Hudson Rivers had suffered severe losses of sachems and elders during outbreaks of disease.55 Considering Sassoonan’s performance in 1715, the calumet appeared to be revitalizing Delaware leadership too. The Delaware adoption of the calumet is an interesting addition to the discussion of the nation’s identification with women. In 1694, Senecas and Onondagas sent a belt of wampum to the Delaware with the message to fight with them against the French: “You Delaware Indians doe nothing but stay att home and boill yor potts, and are like women.” The Delaware flatly refused and sent the belt back to the senders. Governor Benjamin Fletcher backed the Delaware later that year in an Iroquois conference in Albany.56 In 1712, the Delaware carried thirty-two belts of wampum to the Iroquois, twenty-four of which were from women. But by this time, they had accepted the gift of the calumet, adorned with women’s hair and other symbols analogous to the role the Delaware had already chosen. Had the Iroquois now dreamed that the Delaware were to be like women, responsible for peace in the region? That the Delaware accepted the gift and for a while faithfully “carried it to all the nations around,” is evidence of a type of hierarchy defined and legitimized by religious beliefs. Pennsylvania’s Indians consistently recognized some supremacy held by the Iroquois, but what that was exactly remains unclear. A few decades later, German immigrant-interpreter and adopted Mohawk, Conrad Weiser, could only say that the relationship between the Delaware and Iroquois was unequal, but only “in an Indian sense.”57 It is most probable that, in gifting the calumet to Pennsylvania Indians, the Iroquois ritually adopted those nations bestowing obligations with limited infringements on sovereignty. Indeed, the Delaware acceptance of the gift carried with it significant autonomy along with a role that was understandable, even admirable to other Natives. In the 1660s, Father Allouez recorded that when “the pipe is left in the keeping of the most honored man,” it is “a sacred trust, and a sure pledge of peace and union that will ever subsist among them as long as it shall remain in that person’s hands.” Clearly the Delaware had no open warfare with the Iroquois and were not “subdued” in any European sense. Rather their new relation to the Iroquois was defined and 55 56 57

Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 166–69. mcpc, 1:447; Jennings, The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, 163. Gunlog Fur, Gender and Colonial Encounters Among the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 173.

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legitimized using Native religious rituals and sacred objects. Refugees coming into the colony testified that they were “happy to live in a Country at Peace, and not… where we formally liv’d” like slaves.58 Of all the groups, the Conestogas (formerly Susquehannocks) are hardest to read and remain conspicuously quiet in these particular treaty records. As the only conquered nation in this web of alliances, the Conestogas betray an anger lying beneath the surface, evidenced by the belligerent orders they gave to the Nanticokes. Unlike the Delaware, there is no indication that they were offered to carry the calumet, but Native religion allowed for variations which gave the Conestogas choices too. Soon after their dispersal, Susquehannock men began to renew their spiritual power as Iroquois pressed them to join war parties on southern Indians. It appears that their identification with spiritual powers that made them formidable hunters and warriors was resurrected as Iroquois and Conestoga warriors continued the pattern of mourning war even as Quaker officials portrayed Indians as lovers of peace. Indeed, during the next decade or more, these confederate war parties would occupy the greatest source of worry for Pennsylvania’s Indian affairs. The three calumet ceremonies reveal that Native-Native relationships were undergoing a significant realignment. The identity of Delaware Indians as domicile was reified even as they could now gradually remove upriver, closer to the sphere of the Conestogas and away from the incoming tide of settlers and disease. Refugee Indians from the south and west were properly settled too. Although vanquished, the martial identity of the Conestogas was renewed as young warriors were allowed to join south-bound Iroquois raids against southern Indians who now felt the full brunt of Iroquoian expansion. Indians residing within Pennsylvania had to renegotiate their relationships with the ­Iroquois, causing Delaware, Conestoga, and other refugee groups to repeatedly undertake “wampum journeys” facilitated with the use of the calumet. In the Treaty of 1707, the Nanticokes told Governor Evans that they were taking so many belts of wampum to the Five Nations because they had been at peace with them for twenty-seven years. If the Nanticoke recollection was correct, Chesapeake Indians began aligning with the Iroquois around the time of the Susquehannock dispersal. Iroquoian claims to the region were restated at a large treaty at Conestoga in July, 1710. There Onondaga “King” Connessoa approved Conestoga as a proper council fire, “resolved” the settling of the Nanticokes nearby, and declared that his people and Pennsylvania were “now one body one heart and one head.” He also made it clear that “the Land belonged to the five Nations,” and those living there must be hospitable to strangers, “for 58 Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 51:47–49; mcpc, 2:388.

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without the assistance of the 5 Nations neither Christian nor Indian could live here.” In fact, Tuscaroras had ventured through Conestoga just the month before carrying their wampum northward to begin the process of adoption into the Iroquois Confederacy.59 Between 1710 and 1730, Iroquois war parties using the Susquehanna corridor relentlessly inflicted significant casualties against southern Native enemies, shaping the Tuscarora and Yamasee Indian wars. For colonial authorities who attempted to thwart Indian wars, it seemed that the Iroquoia-Catawba mourning war would have no end. Anthony Wallace maintains that the formation of the League of Peace, which took place before European contact, was a revitalization movement to relieve the anxiety and “cultural distortion” caused by endemic blood feuds. It appears that the spreading of the calumet by the Iroquois was a religious strategy to revitalize their culture in keeping with their policy of neutrality in the Northeast. If so, the Iroquois-Pennsylvania alliance was initiated by the Iroquois two decades before the one initiated by James Logan. It is also important to note that these ceremonies evolved and changed. The first calumet, used to aid and approve refugees, was simply smoked. The second was used to verify wampum tribute to the Iroquois and was carefully laid down on the ground next to many belts of wampum. Only at the end was it smoked. The third calumet was used by the Delaware to influence more favorable trade relations. In that instance, a much fuller ritual emerged, one reminiscent of the “calumet dance” of the Mississippians. Ultimately, these councils demonstrate that ­Native confidence in tobacco and the calumet, and by extension their religion, had dissipated little in the face of colonization. Tobias Eric Biörck noted this when he wrote about the difficulties of spreading Christianity to Indians. Drawing from the experiences of his youth in Pennsylvania where he was born, and where his father, Reverend Eric Biörck had ministered from 1697 to 1714, ­Tobias explained that any “causes why the heathen are not easily converted” were due to their “almost invincible obstinacy along with a prejudice concerning the superiority of their own life and religion.”60 There is a temptation to equate cultural change as cultural loss, but continuity is often only possible through adaptation. Native religion continued to provide “a diverse range of choices” to the meet the changing circumstances of coexistence in Pennsylvania.61 59 Kent, eaid, 1:133–137; Mpcp 2:511–512. 60 Tobias Eric Biörck, The Planting of the Swedish Church in America. Graduation Dissertation for the University of Uppsala, Sweden, 1731. Translated and edited by Ira Oliver Nothstein, (Rock Island, Illinois: Augustana College Library, 1943), 35. 61 Wallace, Revitalizations and Mazeways, ix; quote is from Robert S. Grumet’s introduction.

Chapter 5

“Cast under Our Care”: Elite Quaker Masculinity and Political Rhetoric about American Indians in the Age of Revolutions Ray Batchelor In the fall of 1795, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Indian Committee (pymic) issued a circular letter to Friends representing the five mid-Atlantic states at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The committee’s message began by alluding to the distressed state of their readers’ Indian neighbors and briefly recounted the Quakers’ long, peaceful relationship with these peoples. The authors suggested that these points obligated Friends to intercede on behalf of the suffering Indians in accordance with their “professed principles of peace and goodwill to men.” They then proposed answering the “loud calls for [their] benevolence and charitable exertions to promote amongst [the Indians] the principles of the Christian religion, as well as to turn their attention to school learning, agriculture, and useful mechanic employments.” As part of this outreach, the committee also recommended that Quakers attempt to see the “disposition of government towards this desirable object improved.”1 By positioning themselves as mediators between the government and the Indians, the elite Friends who comprised the pymic accomplished several aims.2 First, and principally, these men fulfilled an essential duty of their faith. The Friends’ peace testimony compelled them to try to mitigate the violence that characterized relations between white settlers and Indians along the western border of the United States. Their plan to assimilate the native inhabitants 1 Religious Society of Friends, The Proceedings Of The Yearly Meeting For Pennsylvania, &c. Respecting The Situation Of The Indian Natives In The Year 1795: And The Circular Letter Of The Committee Then Appointed To Attend Thereto, To Which Are Subjoined, Extracts Of Speeches And Letters From Some Of Their Chiefs Earnestly Requesting The Assistance Of Their Old Friends (Philadelphia: Printed by Samuel Sansom, 1795), 4. 2 Historian James H. Merrell has pointed out the language available for describing indigenous societies is always problematic. The use of the term Indian in this article is not intended to mask the diverse range of communities who lived near the colony but were not white. Whenever possible, individual national or tribal affiliations will be used instead. See James H. Merrell, “Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians,” William and Mary Quarterly 69.3 (July 2012): 451–512.

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of North America seemed a sound means for reducing cultural divisions and establishing peace in a manner acceptable to both their pacifist beliefs and the federal government’s needs. From the start of the Seven Years’ War through the end of the American Revolution, though, ideals of masculinity had shifted, placing an increased value on the citizen-soldier as the exemplar of manhood, thereby leaving pacifist Quakers emasculated in the eyes of outsiders, whose perceptions of the peace testimony had accordingly turned negative. By giving Friends a constructive purpose in national service that endowed them with a distinctively civilizing masculinity derived from their male privilege as political actors in the new republic, the pymic’s proposition made up for what eschewing military serviced denied Quakers.3 While the committee members attempted to reshape the public role of Friends following the American Revolution, their strategy was not innovative. Instead, their plan aligned with the sophisticated rhetorical interpretation that elite Quaker men had used to justify their leadership during the first seven decades of the colony’s history. The anomalous situation of pacifists controlling a territory the size of Pennsylvania while surrounded by potentially hostile neighbors led the original proprietor, William Penn, to promote friendly relations between his government and the local Indians. Rather than missionary efforts to assimilate them, however, he tailored his efforts to promoting peace through equitable treatment. Thus, the maintenance of peaceful interactions with Indians became a cornerstone of Quaker rationalizations for their dominance in Pennsylvania’s government. Friends subsequently guided the transformation of a peripheral imperial outpost into a vibrant, cosmopolitan c­ enter of trade noteworthy for the economic prosperity enjoyed by many of their planters and merchants. Many observers, including Chief Justice James Logan, credited these successes back to Penn’s original settlement with the Indians.4 Furthermore, pairing the lure of financial stability with the official toleration of all faiths attracted a wide variety of European migrants, thereby ensuring the colony’s continued expansion. The same beneficence and fairness that had 3 Karen Hagemann and Jane Rendall, “Introduction,” in Gender, War and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1775–1830, ed. Karen Hagemann, Gisela Mettele, and Jane Rendall (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 18. Hagemann and Rendall argue that conceptions of citizenship merged with the performance of military service during this period. See also Ricardo A. Herrera, For Liberty and the Republic: The American Citizen as Soldier, 1775–1861 (New York: New York University Press, 2015), x and Sarah Crabtree, Holy Nation: The Transatlantic Quaker Ministry in an Age of Revolution (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 63–65. 4 James Logan to John Penn, Aug. 2, 1731, Penn Papers, Official Correspondence, ii, 181 as quoted in Francis P. Jennings, “The Delaware Interregnum,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 89.2 (April 1965): 177.

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been used to establish an equitable peace with the Indians allowed Quakers to rule this multiethnic, multilingual, religiously divided population as a unified and tranquil society. This assessment became the foundational myth that elite Quakers trumpeted as validation for their holy experiment and the favor they felt God had bestowed on Friends as patriarchal rulers.5 In the forty years between the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War and the pymic letter, this narrative dissolved under the increasing criticism of Pennsylvanians who had rejected pacifism as a viable governing strategy during wartime. This reaction forced Friends to adjust their rhetoric incrementally in response to persistent critiques of their ability to be effective leaders. Their enemies, however, extended their rhetorical assault to challenge Quakers as deficient figurative fathers of the colony and insufficiently masculine to rule over others. As martial masculinity and notions of republican equality gained ascendancy in North America, however, white Pennsylvanians rejected the idea of rulers as fathers.6 To avoid losing their patriarchal position, Quakers rhetorically turned their weakened Indian allies into children in need of assistance and protection, much like the dominant Anglo-American view, while presenting themselves as uniquely capable of maintaining peace and prosperity for all groups. The particularities of the Pennsylvanian context do not preclude it from being an ideal case study for the adoption of new gender conceptions or for the role these changes played in formulating policies concerning American Indians. In fact, the colony’s distinctiveness highlights similar shifts that occurred throughout the United States. As non-Quaker Pennsylvanians adopted martial ideals of masculinity consistent with those of their neighbors, they also abandoned the Quaker goals of interracial cooperation and coexistence and instead targeted Indians for extermination through either violence or assimilation. This shift in policy suggests that the development of American conceptions of manhood were intimately bound to the project of colonizing and eliminating Indians groups. As a besieged minority, Quakers were incapable of effectively countering this ideological shift. Instead, they embraced assimilation as a means for avoiding bloodshed. Attention to this process allows an early glimpse into the development of a settler colonial society’s philosophy and the uses of gender conceptions in shaping them.7 5 Jack D. Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–1783 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 156–157. 6 John Smolenski, “From Men of Property to Just Men: Deference, Masculinity, and the Evolution of Political Discourse in Early America,” Early American Studies 3.2 (2007): 283. 7 See Patrick Wolfe, “Race and the Trace of History: For Henry Reynolds,” in Studies in Settler Colonialism: Politics, Identity and Culture, ed. Fiona Bateman and Lionel Pilkington

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The successful ability of Quakers to negotiate attacks on their manhood prior to the American Revolution was due in part to the lack of a single hegemonic understanding of masculinity during this time. While all men were eligible for manhood, many remained excluded from patriarchal authority, resulting in a “plurality of masculinities, many of which existed in tension with each other and with patriarchal concepts that were themselves varied and muddled rather than comprising a monolithic measure of manhood.”8 Among the most important of the alternative gender paradigms that existed during the imperial conflicts of the second half of the eighteenth century was martial masculinity, a concept that manifested itself as an ideal thanks to fears that Englishmen were losing not only their manhood but also their national identity as their refinement created behaviors resembling those of the French.9 The multiplicity of masculinities available to Pennsylvania residents allowed both the Quakers and their detractors to proclaim their version as the true standard and to denigrate all others as aberrant. For Quakers, the ability to access multiple forms of masculinity was particularly important due to some peculiarities of their theology. The Society of Friends adopted unusual attitudes toward women, including allowing female Quakers the right to speak in meetings and to assume largely independent control over women’s meetings.10 Moreover, the recognition and encouragement of feminine spirituality altered the organization of the domestic sphere as mothers assumed more authority for teaching and rearing children.11 Such results of Quaker teachings lessened male supremacy and authority in traditional centers of masculine power. Elite Friends in Pennsylvania compensated for this diminishment to some degree through their dominance over the colony’s political life, which allowed them to claim gentlemanly masculinity until war erupted and instigated changes in the popular definitions of manliness.12 Even then, however, other options remained available to them. They continued to counter denigrations of their ideals of masculinity by appealing 8 9 10 11 12

(­Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Nancy Shoemaker, “A Typology of Colonialism,” Perspectives on History 53.7 (2015): 195–212. Alexandra Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen? Manhood in Britain, circa 1500–1700,” Journal of British Studies 44:2 (April 2005): 292. Valérie Capdeville, “Gender at Stake: The Role of Eighteenth-Century London Clubs in Shaping a New Model of English Masculinity,” Culture, Society & Masculinities 4.1 (2012): 22. Jean R. Soderlund, “Women’s Authority in Pennsylvania and New Jersey Quaker Meetings, 1680–1760,” William and Mary Quarterly 44.4 (October 1987): 722–749. Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 78–80. Smolenski, “From Men of Property,” 266.

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to notions of sensibility and virtue before finally adopting martial language to describe their religious tenets.13 Despite the Quakers’ ability to augment patriarchy by describing it as benevolent or meritocratic, masculinity was essentially reduced to the choice between patriarchal or martial forms in the period before the Revolution. The first option rested on a long tradition of deference to propertied elites that started to lose sway in the strife that engulfed the region after the Seven Years’ War began. Initially some effort was made to reconcile these competing forms of manhood. The clearest example was the attempt of the British and American press to valorize Major General James Wolfe after his death, when patriotic fervor led many writers to promote him as an exemplary combination of military genius and compassionate paternalist.14 With the onset of hostilities between the colonies and the metropole, Wolfe’s example became more complex, but, more importantly, martial masculinity began to eclipse paternalism. The hegemony of the warrior ideal conformed more readily to the democratic notions of the revolutionaries because it opened leadership to all white men and served to shape a coherent national identity.15 So by the end of the Revolution, their two options had been essentially reduced to one. As these findings attest, Quaker gender roles, specifically the crisis of masculinity wrought by male reformers’ commitment to the peace testimony during the conflicts of the late eighteenth century, have received sustained attention from scholars. Similarly, many historians’ works have focused on the relationships between Indians and Europeans during the latter half of the eighteenth century in Pennsylvania, including some that have addressed gender in their analyses.16 Typically, however, they focus less on competing masculinities 13 14 15

16

Nicole Eustace, “The Sentimental Paradox: Humanity and Violence on the Pennsylvania Frontier,” William and Mary Quarterly 65.1 (2008): 29–30; Crabtree, Holy Nation, 65. Nicholas Rogers, “Brave Wolfe: The Making of a Hero,” in A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840, ed. Kathleen Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 251–252. See Gregory T. Knouff, “Masculinity, Race and Citizenship: Soldiers’ Memories of the American Revolution,” in Gender, War and Politics, 338; Herrera, For Liberty and the Republic, 3; Mark E. Kann, A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics (New York and London: New York University Press, 1998), 109. For a few examples, see Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York: Norton, 1988); Kevin Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), and James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: Norton, 1999). Gender informs the works of Jane T. Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003) and Nancy Shoemaker, A

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among Euro-Americans, and they have yet to examine the role that similar gender insecurities played in shaping the policies that elite Friends adopted toward American Indians. Friends and their detractors geared their arguments entirely toward convincing Pennsylvania residents to accept their side’s view. This is fortunate because it resulted in their points being printed in still accessible broadsides, pamphlets, and newspapers. While the authors only provided explicit critiques of the deficient qualities of their enemies, the assumptions they made about what constituted acceptable expressions of masculinity were indirectly displayed as well. This makes these documents invaluable resources for tracing the development of white men’s understanding of their proper roles in society, perceptions which would not have appeared in writings that were not intended for publication. In one such source, for example, the venerable Quaker preacher and abolitionist John Woolman recorded a prophetic dream in February 1754. He recalled strolling in an orchard when the sky suddenly became streaked with fire. Upon entering a nearby home, he observed gloomy individuals gathered in a room inside. Taking a seat by a window, he further witnessed “a great multitude of men in military posture,” including some men of his acquaintance, marching close to the house. Presumably, Woolman’s visions foretold the coming of the imperial contest between France and Great Britain that would subsequently be known as the Seven Years’ War. Woolman went on, however, to predict another looming conflict revealed in this reverie. Silently watching as the soldiers marched past his window, the eminent pacifist was addressed by some of them “in a scoffing, taunting way.”17 Although he failed to elaborate further on the nature or possible reasons for this heckling, the troops were undoubtedly criticizing his dedication to the Quaker peace testimony, or the strict devotion to nonviolence.18 Two linked trends informed Woolman’s dream and together established the initial challenge to Quaker masculinity: the increasing rivalry among imperial powers in North America and the widespread embrace of martial manhood cultivated through prolonged conflict. Prior to the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, Pennsylvania enjoyed a period commonly labeled by historians as

17 18

Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), especially 105–124. John Woolman, The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, ed. Phillips P. Moulton (Richmond, Indiana: Friends United Press, 1989), 46–47. Quotes on page 47. In his analysis of this dream, Geoffrey Plank also links it to the Quaker peace testimony. See John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 121–122.

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the Long Peace, during which the colony maintained peaceful relations with their Indian neighbors. For elite Friends, the credit for this went to both divine favor for their rule and the skillful efforts of the Quaker-dominated assembly in managing their Indian alliances. Their opponents posited, however, that if the assembly deserved credit for the Long Peace, then it must also be blamed for the failure to heed early warnings from people like the receiver-general of New York, Archibald Kennedy, about both the threat of conflict and proposals to secure the loyalty of native allies in preparation for it.19 Other than the trade in arms, none of Kennedy’s suggestions contradicted Quaker teachings or policies, but the Quakers’ failure to strengthen their alliances through careful management or by providing goods more cheaply than the French allowed their critics to charge Quakers with insufficiently matching their rhetoric with policy. Throughout 1755 and 1756, government documents and the Pennsylvania Gazette provided numerous accounts of violence perpetrated against white settlers by previously friendly Indians.20 Despite the peace testimony espoused by the Quaker-led Assembly, the Anglican governor, Robert Hunter Morris, declared war on the hostile Lenni Lenape bands on April 14, 1756, only one day after learning that some back-country settlers planned to march on Philadelphia.21 The Quakers responded by pleading with the governor to set aside war until “Attempts may be made, by pacifick [sic] Measures, to reduce [the Lenni Lenape] to a Sense of their Duty” and the Assembly agreed.22 The divisions between these factions—Quakers and the Assembly as benevolent patriarchs opposing the governor and the back-country settlers as warriors—would persist through the start of the Revolution. Wartime rhetoric rapidly reshaped the boundaries for acceptable expressions of masculinity that marginalized the pacifism of the Quakers. For example, on February 26, 1756, the Pennsylvania Gazette published a letter from 1673, presumably written during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, decrying a ­coward 19 20

21 22

Archibald Kennedy, The Importance of Gaining and Preserving the Friendship of the Indians to the British Interest Considered (London, 1752), 3, 14, 17, 22, 25. The Pennsylvania Gazette, 19 February 1756; 4 March 1756; 11 March 1756; 5 April 1756; 15 April 1756; 18 November 1756. See also “At a Council held at Philadelphia, Saturday 8th November, 1755,” in Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, from the Organization to the Termination of the Proprietary Government, Volume vi, edited by Samuel Hazard (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Theo. Fenn and Company, 1851), 683. (hereafter cited as mpcp, vi); “A Letter from Mr. Edward Biddle, at Reading, to his Father in the City,” in mpcp, vi, 705; and “At a Council held at Philad’ the 29th December, 1755, P. M.,” mpcp, vi, 767–768. The Pennsylvania Gazette, 15 April 1756. The Pennsylvania Gazette, 22 April 1756.

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as “neither a good Subject, a good Christian, nor a good or wise Man, in any Shape.”23 The paper printed this alongside an article that complained that the “Healthy and Vigorous should prefer a Life of Effeminacy and Inactivity, to the glorious Labours of a martial Employment” and stated that this was “squandering their Youth and Masculinity,” before the author began deploring the “Infamy of Cowardice.”24 In Pennsylvania, such linking of manhood with warfare and cowardice with pacifism could not be viewed by contemporaries as anything other than a criticism of the Quaker peace testimony. Indeed, anti-Quaker polemicists quickly produced a series of pamphlets that more directly targeted the manhood of the Friends. William Smith, provost of the College of Philadelphia, was a particularly harsh critic, accusing the Quakers of being conniving cabalists “conducting political Intrigues, under the Mask of Religion.”25 Alongside, and in contrast to, his praise for the “brave Men…fighting our Battles,”26 he skewered the Quakers for leaving the colony “at the Mercy of cruel Savages, with our Hands tied up…by the absurd Principles of [the] Legislature [by which he meant the peace testimony].”27 He then connected pacifism with emasculation more directly by detailing the actions of marauding Indians: “Stakes were found driven into the private Parts of the Women, and the Mens [sic] private Parts cut off, and put into their Mouths.”28 This literal castration and figurative silencing provides evidence of the loss of manhood he deemed a result of failing to embrace warfare against the Lenni Lenape. To make his point plainer, Smith quoted the Oneida leader Scarouady’s address to the governor and the Assembly: “We…once more invite and request you to act like Men, and be no longer as Women, pursuing weak Measures, that render your Names despicable.”29 By employing the words of a Haudenosaunee ally, Smith showed the peace testimony to be not only ineffectual due to differing cultural perceptions of manhood but also threatening to Pennsylvania’s native alliances. Smith’s examples were not merely anti-Quaker 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

The Pennsylvania Gazette, 26 February 1756. Ibid. Emphasis in orginal. William Smith, A Brief State of the Province of Pennsylvania: In Which the Conduct of Their  Assemblies for Several Years Past is Impartially Examined (London; Dublin, 1755). Quote on 28. William Smith, A Brief View of the Conduct of Pennsylvania, for the Year 1755: So Far as it Affected the General Service of the British Colonies (London, 1756), 22–23. Ibid., 42. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 49. A similar statement is found in “At a Council held in the State House, Saturday the 10th April, 1756,” in Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, from the Organization to the Termination of the Proprietary Government, Volume vii, edited by Samuel Hazard, 78–83 (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Theo. Fenn and Company, 1851), 79–80. (hereafter cited as mpcp, vii).

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polemics, for Scarouady was not the only Indian to question the manhood of their English allies. The Mohawk leader Hendrick made a similar point while praising the enemy by stating, “Look at the French, they are Men; they are fortifying every where [sic]. But We are ashamed to say it, You are all like Women, bare and open without any Fortifications.”30 Smith also extended his attacks on Quaker masculinity to targets other than the peace testimony. He portrayed his opponents as both effeminate in their mannerism and under the control of women. For example, in describing Friends, he wrote: With doleful Sighs, each whining Friend relates Poor Fox’s Suff’rings, and the Martyr’s Fates.31 In addition, he warned that they were far from being effective patriarchs and rulers: Each Saint in Petticoats foretells our Fate And fain wou’d guide the giddy Helm of State.32 The criticisms of Smith and likeminded pamphleteers inevitably led to arguments that Quakers were unfit for governing on the basis that war required martial leadership instead of pacifism.33 Interestingly, these attacks focused exclusively on Friends’ political machinations and their devotion to pacifism without blaming them for failing to protect the alliances with the Lenni Lenape. Even a small minority of Quakers apparently agreed that their peace testimony conflicted with the requirements of sitting in the Assembly. At the onset of the war, fourteen Friends signed an epistle stating that it was their “duty to cease from those national contests productive of misery and bloodshed, and submit…to him, the Most High, whose tender love to his children exceeds the most warm affections of natural parents.”34 A year later, six Friends chose to ­resign their seats in the Assembly.35 While this resulted in the loss of a 30 31 32 33 34 35

“At a Meeting as aforesaid on Tuesday the 2d July, 1754, P. M.,” in mpcp, vi, 81. William Smith, A Letter From A Gentleman In London, To His Friend In Pennsylvania: With A Satire; Containing Some Characteristical Strokes Upon The Manners And Principles Of The Quakers (n.p.: 1756), 16. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 2, 13, 23; Smith, A Brief View of the Conduct, 86. “An Espistle from our General Spring Meeting, etc., 1755. To Friends on the Continent of America,” in Woolman, The Journal and Major Essays, 48. “At a Council held at Philadelphia, Thursday the 10th June, 1756,” in mpcp, vii, 148–149. See also David Sloan, “‘A Time of Sifting and Winnowing’: The Paxton Riots and Quaker Non-Violence in Pennsylvania,” Quaker History 66.1 (Spring 1977): 9–10, 22.

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s­ ignificant amount of power in the legislative body during the 1760s, the Quakers continued to dominate it until the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians assumed control in the 1773–1774 session.36 So despite the challenges to their masculinity, the Friends retained their patriarchal authority almost until the Revolution. In part, this success resulted from the continuing importance placed upon the view of manhood as being embodied by the polite gentlemen and benign patriarch. Defenders of the Quakers capably deflected the worst criticisms of pacifism, usually through the enumeration of qualities such as their honesty and adherence to principled convictions they found lacking in their critics.37 This tactic was especially powerful when paired with a recounting of the colony’s success under Quaker stewardship.38 Perhaps more importantly, however, leading Quakers continued to work at reconciling the Lenni Lenape to the proprietary government. For example, Israel Pemberton, often referred to as the King of the Quakers by his political opponents, led several negotiations with representatives of the Six Nations in 1756 to bring the Lenni Lenape back to the English side. At one such meeting, he told Scarouady that he would mediate between the Lenni Lenape and the Pennsylvania government, because they “have no King, and their old wise Men are gone, we look on them as Children, who do not know what they are doing.”39 Although this signals a partial adoption of the paternalistic rhetoric of subsequent generations of Quakers, Pemberton also reasserted the equality between the English and the Six Nations by giving Scarouady a large belt of pure white wampum, stating that “it is made of many pieces which are small, and of little Weight or Strength before they are knit together, but is now strong and firm; so we when collected and united together shall appear to our Brethren.”40 Interventions such as this helped to reconcile the Lenni Lenape and the colonial government over time, bringing

36 37

38 39

40

Wayne L. Bockelman and Owen S. Ireland, “The Internal Revolution in Pennsylvania: An Ethnic-Religious Interpretation,” Pennsylvania History 41.2 (1974): 140–141. An Humble Apology For The Quakers, Addressed To Great And Small: Occasioned By Certain Gross Abuses And Imperfect Vindications Of That People, Relative To The Late Public Fast: To Which Are Added Observations On A New Pamphlet, Intituted A Brief View Of The Conduct Of Pennsylvania For The Year 1755 (London: Stanley Crowder and Henry Woodgate, 1756), 14, 22, 28. Ibid., 36–37. Several Conferences Between Some Of The Principal People Amongst The Quakers In Pennsylvania And The Deputies From The Six Indian Nations In Alliance With Britain: In Order To Reclaim Their Brethren The Delaware Indians From Their Defection, And Put A Stop To Their Barbarities And Hostilities (Newcastle upon Tyne: I. Thompson and Company, 1756), 19, 21. Quote on 19. Ibid., 21.

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peace while simultaneously countering the proprietary party.41 At the same time, these actions also helped Quakers exert themselves as patriarchal leaders bringing benefits to their entire community as well as neighboring Indians. Once peace with the Lenni Lenape was reestablished, rhetorical attacks on the Quakers subsided until near the end of the Seven Years’ War, when Pontiac’s War again inflamed Indian hatred on the Pennsylvania frontier. In the ensuing pamphlet war, many of the old arguments promulgated by Smith and his confederates were redeployed. The intervening years, however, had more firmly entrenched martial masculinity in Pennsylvania society, and the anti-Quaker faction had sharpened its rhetorical skills. This time, the key arguments against Quaker leadership came from the Scotch-Irish minister Thomas Barton following the massacre of a group of Christian Susquehannock Indians in Lancaster County by a group of back-country, Scotch-Irish settlers called the Paxton Boys. Without endorsing the killings, Barton accused Friends of colluding with the Lenni Lenape leader Teedyuscung to press land claims against the colony, gerrymandering districts to perpetuate their power at the expense of the ScotchIrish, and failing to address the killing of back-country residents by Indians as a means of increasing their political power by eliminating rivals.42 Barton then cited Pemberton’s extragovernmental negotiations as encouraging Indians to view him as the “first Man, or CHIEF SACHEM of the Province” while reducing other Pennsylvanians to “a pusillanimous Pack of old Women, divided among [themselves], without SPIRIT or RESOLUTION.”43 In this fashion, Barton cast the Quakers’ claims of patriarchal authority to be part of a scheme to emasculate their rivals, who were reduced to being “Dupes and Slaves to Indians.”44 Barton also used the Quakers’ actions against them to ­attack their status as 41

Robert Daiutolo, “The Role of Quakers in Indian Affairs During the French and Indian War,” Quaker History 77.1 (1988): 29. For a more critical assessment of Quaker actions, see Michael Goode, “A Failed Peace: The Friendly Association and the Pennsylvania Backcountry during the Seven Years’ War,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 136.4 (2012): 472. 42 Thomas Barton, The Conduct Of The Paxton-Men, Impartially Represented: With Some Remarks On The Narrative (Philadelphia: Printed by A. Steuart, 1764), 4–6. For Quaker political dominance see also Matthew Smith, A Declaration and Remonstrance of the Distressed and Bleeding Frontier Inhabitants of the Province of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1764), 8–9. For the Quaker desire to eliminate their enemies, see The Quakers Grace, Prayer, and Thanksgiving, on Sunday Sixth, Tenth month 1765, for Their Late Victory Over the Rebels, in Their Province of Quylsylvania, in Electing Law-makers for the Same (Philadelphia, 1765). 43 Barton, The Conduct Of The Paxton-Men, 7. See also Smith, A Declaration and Remonstrance, 18. Smith brings up the negotiations of the Quakers led by Pemberton as a means of undermining the government and providing aid and comfort to the enemy. Emphases in original. 44 Smith, A Declaration and Remonstrance, 9.

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polite gentlemen. In the aftermath of the Lancaster Massacre, the Paxton Boys marched on Philadelphia. Because a minority of Quakers joined an armed militia to prevent the Paxton Boys from entering the city, Barton charged the Quakers, as a whole, with hypocrisy regarding the peace testimony.45 Other pamphleteers seized on this to argue further that while Friends might be benevolent fathers to Indians, they refused the same compassion to back-country settlers of their own race.46 Supporters of the Quakers failed to address these charges directly, preferring instead to criticize their opponents. Quaker-friendly polemicists attempted to paint their enemies as uncivilized, merciless, and irrationally motivated by ­racial hatred.47 They compared the Paxtons unfavorably—and presumably without irony—to Spaniards, Africans, and Indians for their treatment of the unarmed Susquehannocks, labeling them “CHRISTIAN WHITE SAVAGES.”48 Then they unflatteringly compared the Paxtons to Jews for violating the peace treaty between Pennsylvania and the Susquehannocks.49 This time, the proQuaker faction resorted to explicit claims denying the masculinity of their adversaries, referring to them as “Unmanly Men! who are not ashamed to come with Weapons against the unarmed, to use the Sword against Women, and the Bayonet against young Children.”50 Pamphleteers derided such behavior as beyond the bounds of martial masculinity, something that “no Man of real 45 Barton, The Conduct Of The Paxton-Men, 9, 12, 14. See also David James Dove, The Quaker Unmask’d; Or, Plain Truth: Humbly Address’d To The Consideration Of All The Freemen Of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1764), 6, 9–10 and Alison Olson, “The Pamphlet War over the Paxton Boys,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 123.1/2 (January-April 1999): 50. 46 Dove, The Quaker Unmask’d, 4–6, 8. See also Smith, A Declaration and Remonstrance, 6–7. 47 Benjamin Franklin, A Narrative Of The Late Massacres, In Lancaster County, Of A Number Of Indians, Friends Of This Province. By Persons Unknown ; With Some Observations On The Same (n.p., 1764), 7, 13. For racist language in Quaker defense and the failure to distinguish between Indian nations, see also A Serious Address, To Such Of The Inhabitants Of Pennsylvania, As Have Cannived At, Or Do Approve Of, The Late Massacre Of The Indians At Lancaster; Or The Design Of Killing Those Who Are Now In The Barracks At Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Printed for the Author, 1764), 4. 48 Franklin, A Narrative Of The Late Massacres, 14–27. Quote on 27. See also A Touch on the Times: A New Song, to the Tune of Nancy Dawson (Philadelphia, 1764), 1. 49 Ephesus, A Dialogue between Andrew Trueman and Thomas Zealot: About the Killing the Indians at Cannestogoe and Lancaster (Philadelphia, 1764), 6. 50 Franklin, A Narrative Of The Late Massacres, 29. See also Ephesus, A Dialogue, 3–4; A Touch on the Times, 2, Isaac Hunt, A Looking-Glass For Presbyterians: Or A Brief Examination Of Their Loyalty, Merit, And Other Qualifications For Government. With Some Animadversions On The Quaker Unmask’d. Humbly Addres’d To The Consideration Of The Loyal Freemen Of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1764), 12–14.

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­ ourage or Bravery would bear the Thought of doing.”51 Turning martial culC ture on its head, one even proclaimed that “Mercy still sways the Brave.”52 During this period, Quaker power in the Assembly eroded further but was not eradicated. The Paxtons were more successful in promoting their ideas likely because, unlike the Quakers, they remained unified, and the Quaker faction was less effective in employing satire.53 The Paxton pamphleteers also enjoyed the benefits of seven years’ of warfare, which promoted a masculine ideal that supported their behavior while their opponents adhered to a conception of manhood that was in decline. Meanwhile, Friends still possessed the powerful ability to perpetuate and expand Pennsylvania’s alliances with native leaders such as Teedyuscung and Papunhank, which continued to make them crucial to the security and economic strength of the colony. By defending the Paxton Boys’ actions, the proprietary government opened the door for continuing racialized violence in the future.54 The escalating violence can also be linked to gender conceptions by recognizing that Paxton racial rhetoric ultimately “legitimate[d] an act of cowardice—killing unarmed men, women, and children—as an act of male valor.”55 In large part, these behaviors rested on the ability of the rhetoricians to redefine all native peoples as “Indians” and to redefine the murders at Conestoga as revenge.56 This interpretation, however, does not account for the Paxtons’ critics’ role in essentializing Indian identities. Both sides engaged in rhetoric that classified all native peoples as savage and unchristian in their attacks, which is a marked contrast with earlier discussions wherein Quaker partisans carefully distinguish between allies and enemies. By failing to make these distinctions during the Paxton affair, the Quaker faction unintentionally promoted the dehumanization of Indians and identified them as acceptable targets of violence. In the aftermath of the Paxton controversy, Friends attempted to reestablish their peace testimony and political influence. Escalating tensions between the colonies and Britain, however, quickly threatened to forestall these aims. 51

Charles Read, Copy Of A Letter From Charles Read, Esq., To The Hon. John Ladd, Esq., And His Associates, Justices Of The Peace For The County Of Gloucester (Philadelphia: Printed and Sold by Andrew Steuart, 1764), 4, 6. Quote on 6. 52 Franklin, A Narrative Of The Late Massacres, 31. 53 Olson, “The Pamphlet War Over the Paxton Boys,” 50, 32. 54 Jeremy Engels, “‘Equipped for Murder’: The Paxton Boys and ‘the Spirit of Killing All Indians’ in Pennsylvania, 1763–1764,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 8 (2005): 358. 55 Krista Camenzind, “Violence, Race, and the Paxton Boys,” in Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania, ed. William Pencak and Daniel K. Richter (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 204. 56 Engels, “‘Equipped for Murder,’” 361, 376.

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L­ eading Quaker and antislavery proponent Anthony Benezet published a pamphlet opposing war as “the offspring of the inseparable union between the sensual and malignant passions.”57 In this work, Benezet countered the martial idea of heroism as a glorification of violence that true Christians would eschew.58 This stance may not have been effective, though, because anti-Quaker polemicists were simultaneously redefining passionate displays of emotion, particularly anger, as within the boundaries of acceptable manly behavior.59 Despite having survived attacks on their civic role during both the Seven Years’ War and the Paxton rebellion, the Quakers lost their access to political patriarchy when their dominance in the Pennsylvania Assembly ended shortly before the American Revolution. The only avenue left for maintaining their public masculine authority was through their leadership of the Society of Friends. Theological commitments, however, once again threatened their community’s standing when adherence to the peace testimony led Pennsylvania and New Jersey Friends to issue a statement opposing “all combinations, insurrections, conspiracies, and illegal assemblies.”60 Many of their countrymen interpreted this devotion to pacifism as traitorous Loyalism, including a recent arrival to Philadelphia who rapidly became one of the most influential pamphleteers for the Patriots, Thomas Paine. Unlike their previous adversaries, Paine set aside direct attacks on Quakers for their theology. Still, his writings effectively reduced their access to civic engagement by making them look foolishly idealistic when pragmatism was needed. For example, he proclaimed that “Could the peaceable principle of the Quakers be universally established, arms and the art of war would be wholly extirpated: But we live not in a world of angels.”61 He also indicated that Friends’ loyalty to the British crown contradicted their professed pacifism

57

58 59 60 61

Anthony Benezet, Thoughts On The Nature Of War, And Its Repugnancy To The Christian Life: Extracted From A Sermon, On The 29th November, 1759; Being The Day Of Public Thanksgiving For The Successes Obtained In The Late War (Philadelphia: Printed by Henry Miller, 1766), 5. Ibid., 8–10. Nicole Eustace, Passion is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 176. James Pemberton, The Testimony Of The People Called Quakers: Given Forth By A Meeting Of The Representatives Of Said People, In Pennsylvania And New-Jersey, Held At Philadelphia The Twenty-Fourth Day Of The First Month (Philadelphia: 1775). Thomas Paine, “Thoughts on a Defensive War,” in The Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume 1, 1774–1779, ed. Moncure Daniel Conway (New York and London: The Knickerbocker Press, 1894), 55.

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since the redcoats “likewise bear arms.”62 Paine did adopt some of the strategies of his predecessors, though, including personal attacks on prominent leaders: “O! ye fallen, cringing, priest-and-Pemberton-ridden people! What more can we say of ye than that a religious Quaker is a valuable character, and a political Quaker a real Jesuit.”63 Through this type of attack, Paine couched his gendered critiques in coded language that cast leading Friends as weak, cowardly, crypto-Catholics attempting to enforce their theology by inappropriately inserting religion into government to the detriment of the citizenry.64 While Paine’s critiques damaged the Quaker position, the worst setback to their influence in Pennsylvania came in 1777 with the arrests of many of the most prominent Philadelphia Quaker leaders on suspicions of sedition by their old Presbyterian enemies, who then controlled the government. Those who were arrested objected repeatedly, claiming they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs in a manner that undermined the rights espoused by the revolutionaries.65 The government and Paine each countered that the Quakers had “intended to promote sedition and treason, and encourage the enemy.”66 Previous polemicists had labeled the Friends as traitors and cowards, but the charges and arrest of these men finally provided official sanction to such views and came at a time of increasing devotion to the ideal of the citizen-soldier. For the remainder of the Revolution, Friends were denied access to masculinity through either martial means or government positions, and they continued to be suspected of disloyalty. In response, Quakers formed what has been

62

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66

Paine, “Epistle to Quakers,” in The Writings, 123. Paine also observes that Quakers “are continually harping on the great sin of our bearing arms, but the king of Britain may lay waste the world in blood and famine, and they, poor fallen souls, have nothing to say” in “The American Crisis,” in The Writings, 186. Emphasis in orginal. Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis,” 208. This charge also appears in Thomas Paine, “Epistle to Quakers,” 121, 126. Israel Pemberton, John Hunt, and Samuel Pleasants, The Following Remonstrance, Was This Day Presented To The President And Council, By The Hands Of Their Secretary: To The President And Council Of Pennsylvania. The Remonstrance Of Israel Pemberton, John Hunt, And Samuel Pleasants (Philadelphia: Printed by Robert Bell, 1777); Israel Pemberton, Mason’s Lodge, September 9th, 1777 … To The Inhabitants Of Pennsylvania: The Following Is A Copy Of A Paper We Received At Half Past Four O’clock This Afternoon, And We Have Since Received Orders To Prepare For Our Banishment Tomorrow (Philadelphia, 1777), 1–2; An Address to the Inhabitants of Pennsylvania: By Those Freemen, of the City of Philadelphia, Who are Now Confined in the Mason’s Lodge, by the Vice President of the Council of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Printed by Robert Bell, in Third Street, 1777). 1–3. See also Neva Jean Specht, “‘Being a Peaceable Man, I Have Suffered Much Persecution’: The American Revolution and Its Effects on Quaker Religious Identity,” Quaker History 99.2 (2010): 38. Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis,” 217.

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described as “a holy army to fight for the good of the whole civil community.”67 Principle among their efforts was a push to civilize and assimilate their indigenous neighbors. Quakers again proposed themselves as best suited to mediate between the government and native groups. This is clear from Anthony Benezet’s 1784 description of Indians as fellow pacifists. Though a spurious characterization, it created a rhetorical stance that made Quakers logical agents for shaping Indians into Christian Americans.68 To this end, Benezet called on Quakers “to promote…not only the civilization of these uncultivated people, whom Providence has, as it were, cast under our care; but also their establishment, in a pious and virtuous life.”69 All of these points suggest that since the onset of the Seven Years’ War, the Quaker position regarding their native allies had shifted considerably. For instance, Benezet’s desire to proselytize to the Indians was motivated only in part from the desire to save their souls. He also proposed conversion would also serve as a civilizing tool that, had previous generations engaged in missionary efforts, could have aided “every reasonable purpose of settling in their country.”70 Such assertions directly contravene earlier Quaker rhetoric of peaceful coexistence and Pemberton’s assertion of strength through cooperation. Instead, Benezet’s aims sought to assimilate Indians culturally and, regardless of his intentions, used the American desire of appropriating their lands in order to gain support for his goals. In this way, the renowned crusader of the oppressed linked his efforts with settler colonialist aims. His desire to help his unfortunate neighbors was no doubt sincere, but coexistence had been overwhelmed by the need for assimilation and, ultimately, eradication. Placing Quaker missionary and charitable efforts in the service of federal Indian policy completed the reacceptance of Friends into active public life and justified their place as citizens in the early republic. In adopting many of the positions Benezet had suggested, the pymic made the Society useful to the government without Quakers actually having to serve in office or compromise their peace testimony. Quakers transferred their role as patriarchal leaders away from white citizens and onto helpless Indians, a strategy that removed

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Sydney V. James, “The Impact of the American Revolution on Quakers’ Ideas About Their Sect,” William and Mary Quarterly 19.3 (1962): 360–382. Quote on 377. See also Crabtree, Holy Nation, 65–67. Anthony Benezet, Some Observations on the Situation, Disposition, and Character of the ­Indian Natives of this Continent (Philadelphia: Printed and Sold by Joseph Crukshank, 1784), 26. Ibid., 52. Ibid., 43.

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the cause of their opposition’s hostility to their civic engagement.71 Thus, the gendered rhetoric they employed and the discursive reframing of their relationship with Indians suggests that placing this philosophy in the service of the state provided elite Quakers with the political benefit of reclaimed masculine authority. In her seminal article proposing gender as an essential analytical tool for historians, Joan Scott has advised scholars to examine the reasons the rhetoric of masculinity and femininity were used in political debate and how such rhetoric helped shape conceptions of gender.72 By considering the ways that Quaker defenders and detractors deployed gendered language, two distinct but interrelated purposes become apparent. First, the authors on both sides viewed female attributes as naturally indicating subjugation. Second, each side attempted to sway public opinion to adopt their conception of the most appropriate expression of masculinity. Incidental to each of these aims were the representations of Indians. This fact is clear from the widely disparate uses of rhetoric about native peoples, alternating between noble examples of martial masculinity and irredeemable savagery, as well as representations of distinctive individuals and indistinguishable Indians. The knowledge that, by the end of the Revolution, each side had effectively rendered the Indian as an ineffective rhetorical device by redefining them as children suggests that both Quakers and their opponents had come together to eliminate native people from participation in civic life as either allies or citizens. Quaker rhetoric about Indians after the Revolution, therefore, can be seen as serving a dual purpose. By making themselves fatherly figures to Indians, Quakers were able to aid the dispossessed while also performing a recognized masculine role for other white Americans.73 By “civilizing” the Indian, Friends again made themselves valuable members of Euro-American society and contributors to the nation, thereby providing them with access to republican American ideals of manhood. This benefit suggests that Quaker political

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Jack D. Marietta has refuted claims that Friends undertook this humanitarianism as a means of compensating for their pacifist theology and presents a strong argument that elite Quaker men “did not doubt the correctness of their pacifist course.” See, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 273. Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91.5 (1986): 1074. Tim Reinke-Williams, “Manhood and Masculinity in Early Modern England,” History Compass 12.9 (2014): 687. Reinke-Williams’s assessment of the Quakers’ behavior is that they sought to “ensure deference and obedience from their children but also display[ed] real love and affection for them.”

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leaders’ discursive use of manhood in their polemical writings must thus be ­addressed in assessing their adoption of missionary activities and other policy initiatives during the late eighteenth century, as theology alone cannot explain the uneven treatment of indigenous peoples by the Society of Friends when Quakers faced a continuous need to prove their masculinity to a society that valorized martial virtue as the basis for political participation.

Chapter 6

“Strong Expressions of Regard”: Native Diplomats and Quakers in Early National Philadelphia Stephanie Gamble In the first quarter century of American independence, one hundred delegations of Native peoples, representing forty nations, came to the various cities serving as the national capital. They came to negotiate a range of issues, from land cessions and peace treaties to unscrupulous fur traders. Above all, they came to cultivate ties with a new continental power, the U.S. With many of these one hundred visits overlapping, Indian ambassadors were virtually omnipresent in the halls of Congress and city streets, theatres, hotels, and offices, not to mention the roads and waterways leading to the capital. Intercultural negotiation took place in each of these venues. Both indigenous and white officials self-consciously fashioned diplomatic identities, performing for each other as well as for a wider American public that witnessed (or read about) the dances, marches, speeches, and other public displays, but extra-governmental agents were also key players in the development of capital diplomacy. Diplomacy between federal officials and Native diplomats in the capital during the early republic relied on successful Quaker-Native relations. Despite their unofficial capacity, Quakers were integral to the American government’s hosting of Native deputations. Historians have suggested that the Society of Friends—the Philadelphia and Baltimore Yearly Meetings—turned away from Indian negotiations to focus on domestic projects like model farming in New York and the Ohio country in the early republic. Yet, Quakers quickly became central players in a novel federal-Native culture of diplomacy that emerged in the 1780s and 1790s. Quakers at Philadelphia and Baltimore played an important, though informal, role in diplomacy with Native nations at the federal level. They did this by hosting, educating, and conducting informal diplomacy with Native delegations to the federal capital. Native delegations to the federal capital are essential to understanding the full scope of interactions between Natives and the United States government. Trekking hundreds or thousands of miles to meet the President of the United States, air grievances, or contest federal policy, Native diplomats carried with them a series of expectations for the Father of the American people. In the

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process, they, along with the officials and residents of the capital they encountered, molded a diplomatic culture—a system of shared practices, meanings, and expectations about how to negotiate—rooted in Native protocols and American self-expression. As a group, these deputations seldom appear in scholarship, despite their frequency and persistence throughout the early republic. Many scholars’ tendency to equate treaty-making and diplomacy in the early republic partly explains this oversight. Few delegations to the capital (thirteen percent) directly resulted in treaties. Only 26 treaties were authorized in the capital, a mere twelve percent of the roughly 200 Indian treaties signed between 1789 and 1837. Focusing primarily on treaties has led historians to overlook delegations, which in turn has reinforced a supposed dichotomy between U.S. dominance and indigenous resistance or persistence. Lost in the emphasis on treaties, and thus central to this chapter, is the extra-governmental, indeed social, diplomacy at work: individual and collective acts of diplomacy between Indians and Quakers in the capital.1 Without discounting the significance of treaties, this chapter outlines how policy and the culture of diplomacy shaped each other and Quakers’ place in this interplay. Furthermore, recovering the richness of capital diplomacy emphasizes the ongoing and bilateral (if also asymmetrical) negotiations between Native leaders and federal officials in the early republic.2 What becomes clear from an examination of Natives’ capital experiences is that they were a persistent, and oft-noted, presence in eastern cities throughout the period. This holds broader implications for the study of Native North America. The western movement of peoples has dominated the story of America, most relevant in this case the forcible removal of Native peoples to lands 1 For the narrower period covered in this chapter, 1789–1810, the percentage of delegations that resulted in treaties is a mere 6%, and only 9% of all treaties signed in the period were signed in the capital. There is a rich literature on cultural diplomacy for the colonial period, but comparatively little exists for the early republic. For examples from the colonial period, see particularly James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiations on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2000); Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). For examples in the early republic, see 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, Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1998), 235–269. 2 This is not to suggest that power was equal but rather that the historiographical focus on policy has overemphasized or distorted the shape of American power in federal treaties with Indians.

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west of the Mississippi River.3 Although they constituted a comparatively miniscule stream, hundreds of Native diplomats physically transmitted their curiosity, concerns, and hopes to the eastern U.S., contravening the westward drift of American-Indian history. These men and women beat a path connecting Indian country and the American capital, which would see continual traffic in the early national period. The process of negotiating diplomatic travel to the seat of government highlights the early republic as a period of overlapping zones of power, where extragovernmental entities exercised significant power in specialized roles. Native travel was challenged by the competition of Native nations, individual states, and the federal government. Contests over borders between Native nations and between Natives and the U.S. contributed to the violence and warfare that threatened travelers, particularly in those contested regions. Resolving these conflicts also constituted much of the reason Native delegations trekked to the capital. Logistics and finance for these envoys were also complicated by white contests over the authority of treating with Native people and the attendant financial burdens, as James Monroe saw first as governor of Virginia and later as secretary of state.4 Non-state parties like the Quakers sometimes mitigated and other times muddled these issues. Even as the federal government sought to establish its primacy over Native diplomacy, the capital’s limitations as a landscape of political authority hindered these efforts and created a vacuum for Quakers to fill. Scrutinizing the interactions of Native envoys to and through the capital results in an emphasis on the process of negotiations, not just the results, and on the variety of sites in which diplomacy took place. Acts of diplomacy shaped negotiations not only in wood-paneled rooms of national power but also in the roads leading to the capital, city streets, theatres, and a host of other public institutions, including Quaker meeting houses, schoolrooms, and private homes. With every interaction between the federal government and Native delegates throughout the first several decades of this cross-cultural diplomacy, 3 Daniel Richter has encouraged historians to face east, and change their perspective on early American history. This productive reorientation, with roots in the works of scholars like James Axtell and William Jennings, nevertheless focuses on the arrival of Europeans from the east, rather than the question of Native movement. Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1975). 4 James Monroe to William Eustis, January 25, 1811, Papers of James Monroe.

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the American government proved unable to ignore or entirely replace Native forms of diplomacy. Rather, the rituals of Indian-white diplomacy became entrenched because this type of cultural syncretism signaled a level of cooperation. Broadening the scope of diplomatic activity to incorporate the whole experience of being a diplomat or hosting a delegation encompasses the ways in which the culture of diplomacy changed, and resisted change, as the policies and purposes driving diplomatic interaction transformed throughout the period. An overlooked force in early federal politics, Quakers were not merely physically present but also contributed language, symbols, and ideals to this protean culture of diplomacy. Nor did Quaker patterns of negotiation and conflict with the Delaware and other eastern nations prior to the Revolution vanish in the new nation. This serves as a broader reminder that both white Americans and Indians confronted a new political reality in the early republic, most notably the existence of a new federal authority. By focusing on the federal capital and its steady stream of delegations, rather than on treaties and policy alone, it becomes possible to see many commonalities in how both groups groped their way towards a deeper understanding of how power worked in this novel political landscape. James Merrell has prodded scholars to “include relations with Indians in the study of diplomacy in the new republic,” lamenting how “intricate diplomatic negotiations with Natives” is “a story traditionally served up treaty by treaty from the federal side of the table.”5 Illuminating how Natives came to understand and negotiate with the U.S.—drawing on colonial precedents and cultural traditions, just as white Americans did—points to the shared continental experience of grappling with the federal experiment, symbolized in the capital city itself. By hosting visiting diplomats, Quakers in Philadelphia and Baltimore helped to frame a message of peace and civilization in capital encounters that drew from their own historical experiences.

…

In April 1789, the newly inaugurated President Washington and his secretary of war, Henry Knox, were concerned over the competing powers—Native and European—along the nation’s frontiers. As Washington took office, both Britain and Spain remained firmly planted along U.S. borders, retaining forts and settlements. Powerful Indian nations and confederacies—to the north, south, and west—harbored resentments from the Revolution and from treaties 5 James Merrell, “American Nations, Old and New,” in Native Americans and the Early Republic, 340, 345, 349.

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e­ xtracted by Congress or individual states through the 1780s. Furthermore, federal authorities had some concern regarding the loyalties of those settlers who pushed west from the states into the Cumberland and Ohio valleys. Although federal officials may have believed their own ultimate claim to Indian lands, they were concerned about the smooth settlement of those lands to which they sought title. Frontier warfare was a genuine threat that both Washington and Knox worried would tarnish the new nation’s reputation and ring up costs in both money and men. To control the troublesome border regions, President Washington requested reports on the situation of Indian affairs from both the Northern and Southern departments. The reports from Knox were grim. Under the Confederation Congress, treaties of peace and cession had been negotiated with the Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws at Hopewell, South Carolina, but as late as 1790, no U.S. treaty had been established with the Creeks.6 Despite various attempts to promote a positive rapport with the Creeks, Congress had witnessed relations in the South deteriorate over the course of the 1780s.7 Relations with Native nations to the north and west proved similarly unsettled. As Washington took office, the Ohio region was a powder keg waiting for a spark. The “Northwestern Tribes”—Miamis, Pottawatomies, Shawnees, Delawares, Weas, Piankashaws, and Kickapoos—grew discontented with Congress and the continuing flood of westering settlers. By summer 1789, violence along the Wabash spread beyond war parties and militias, swelling to involve the American army, forcing the new president to fix his attention on the turbulent Northwest.8 As in the Southeast, Washington eagerly sought a new relationship between the United States and the Western Indians. Capital visits would prove to be a key instrument in the process of renovating frayed relations. 6 Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 80; J. Leitch Wright Jr., “Creek-American Treaty of 1790: Alexander McGillivray and the Diplomacy of the Old Southwest,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 51, no. 4 (December 1967): 388. 7 For Creeks during the Revolution, see David H. Corkran, The Creek Frontier, 1540–1783 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967). Following the Revolution, in 1783, 1785, and 1786, Georgia had negotiated treaties with a minority faction of the still divided Creeks. These treaties re-established trade and ceded over 800 square miles between the Oconee and Ogeehee Rivers to Georgia. However, the signatories were not representative of the majority of Creeks. Particularly discontented by the cession of lands at Augusta was McGillivray, who opposed negotiations with the state but favored diplomatic relations with Congress. Congress sent a commission to negotiate with the Creeks and soothe the dissatisfaction in the region since the 1783 treaty, but it was unsuccessful. 8 White, Middle Ground, 413–432; Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 17.

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A centralized federal government appealed to Native diplomats for many reasons. The revolution had reinforced the lesson that the colonies/states would ally with each other and could not be handled separately. While relationships with state governors were important, the ability to treat with a ­central national authority could facilitate negotiation, if not always ensure positive results.9 Engagement with a single body of authority made it possible for Indians to wield the concept of the Great Father, which they applied most often to the President. As a rhetorical tool, constant references to the Great Father in memorials and speeches shaped the expectations of Native leaders in their relationships with the U.S. government. The perpetuation of this discourse by Natives and white Americans over time contributed to particular, if at times conflicting, ideas of the relationship between the Great Father and his children. Meanwhile, the gradual spread of paternal rhetoric across the continent in the early republic informed negotiation practices even among groups that did not subscribe to a notion of a Great Father. This rhetoric conditioned Native expectations of a personal and mutually vesting relationship with a powerful and benevolent president who could and would protect their interests. Acting on these beliefs, both Native people and federal officials deemed it vital for indigenous diplomats to visit the capital and the president. During the capital’s decade long tenure at Philadelphia, a score of delegations made that visit, representing near as many nations. In the decade after the capital made its awkward transition to Washington, another thirty-eight deputations made the trek eastwards. The syncretic culture of diplomacy to which these diplomats contributed in the capital during the early republic was distinct from treaty negotiations undertaken in the West and from earlier colonial negotiations, and it was shaped by indigenous diplomatic protocols. Delegations to the capital, by necessity, consisted of fewer participants than diplomacy closer to home. With a smaller, less diverse body of diplomats, and with the absence of a Native public, capital negotiations were removed from tribal politics not just physically but also symbolically. While negotiations may have taken place on American “turf,” the profusion of indigenous ceremonies, rhetorical devices, and protocols erased or at the very least complicated this political advantage for the U.S. government. Indeed, by traveling in small but steady waves, even as officials looked to control and abate their visits, Native diplomats forced American leaders to acknowledge their legitimacy and influence, if not always acquiesce to their demands. 9 David Andrew Nichols, Red Gentlemen and White Savages: Indians, Federalists, and the Search for Order on the American Frontier (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2008), 55–76.

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Officials utilized capital visits to perform a choreographed recital of the progress of civilization. Subscribing to an understanding of culture as a progression from savagery to civility, U.S. officials hoped to raise Native people from their putative barbarism, exchanging the hunt for farming.10 President Washington’s civilization policy outlined a set of conceptions of and expectations for Natives. The program emphasized Euro-American gender norms, especially regarding labor, the primacy of agriculture for subsistence, and the production of surplus domestic products for the marketplace.11 At the other end of the spectrum, civilization referred more pointedly to the nascent republic and American aspirations for it. In these hopes, the United States would ascend to the pinnacle of civilization, defined by gentility, cosmopolitanism, education, and urbanity. With pomp and circumstance, federal officials aimed to impress upon Indians the benefits of American industry, civilization, and military might. Rather than demonstrating the idea of civilization they wanted Natives to achieve— simple farming—officials and others in the capital sought to inspire them with the level of civilization that the United States had attained. On the one hand, this objective was meant to illustrate what becoming civilized—at even a basic level—would allow Natives to realize, eventually. On the other, it was intended to signal the United States’ superiority. Federal policy and Quaker involvement focused on the first form of civilization, offering farming implements, missionaries, and schoolmasters.12 Federal officials further sought to impress the visiting envoys with the United States’ military potency. During the tense and violent decade of the 1790s, Native delegations were frequently greeted with martial displays, though the general lack of a regular American military, along with Native successes on the battlefields of the northwest, certainly complicated federal efforts to convince envoys of the nation’s military prowess.13 The urban context of the capital was a critical aspect in shaping the parameters and possibilities of diplomatic protocol. One repeat visitor to Philadelphia, the Miami emissary Little Turtle, recounted his initial impressions of the city to an acquaintance noting that it was important for the national capital to 10

Native peoples possessed their own ideals of what qualities indicated civilization; and many had long engaged in agriculture. Nevertheless, the civilization policy of the U.S. ignored these realities in their ethnocentric approach to Native peoples. Reginald Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783–1812 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 53–65. 11 Ibid.; Colin Calloway, Pen and Ink Witchcraft: Treaties and Treaty making in American Indian History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 114, 122. 12 Horsman, Expansion and American Indian Policy, 60–61. 13 White, The Middle Ground, 414, 429–31.

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be a vibrant metropolis. Peering from his window overlooking the High Street market houses, his acquaintance, Comte de Volney relayed, Little Turtle was struck “by the great number of the white people” he observed in the market and traveling about the city.14 Little Turtle’s visits instilled in the former fighter a regard for the population and prosperity of the young nation with which he was negotiating. The federal urban landscape also provided numerous instances where ideals—in particular, Americans’ self-perception as the vanguard of human civilization—faltered (or, more fittingly, stumbled over a rut in one of Washington City’s unfinished streets). Indeed, when the nation government relocated from Philadelphia to Washington in 1800, the sparsely settled town was unable to sustain the social components of negotiations that had become de rigueur in New York and Philadelphia during the 1790s. Rather than adjust the protocols and do away with the public performances and spectacles that had become routine in the federal capital’s first two iterations, federal officials encouraged Native diplomats to visit Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and other bustling eastern cities. There, officials hoped, Natives would come away impressed with U.S. civilization, might, and population. It was on these circuits that additional, non-state groups like the Quakers built upon preexisting Indian contacts, established new political relationships, and carved out a sizeable role for extra-governmental forms of diplomacy that would expand over time.

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The culture of diplomacy that emerged in the capital was not limited to negotiations between federal officials and Native diplomats. Rather, they encompassed the myriad social engagements, public and private performances, and travels that surrounded those more formal negotiations. Individual delegations sometimes stayed for only a few days, but most remained in the capital or on eastern tours for several weeks or months at a time. As a result, government officials leaned on other groups to pick up the slack of hosting and entertaining Native American visitors. Members of Philadelphia’s Year Meeting of the Society of Friends, and, after the capital moved southward in 1800, those of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting, took on much of this work, contributing in vital and lasting ways to the diplomatic culture in the federal capital among Native and white politicians. The Friends were both geographically and historically well placed to fulfill a multifaceted role in capital negotiations. While their political dominance 14 Volney, A View, 382–83. Little Turtle and the interpreter William Wells met nearly a dozen times over the months of January and February 1798.

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waned in the years following the Seven Years War due to their pacifist stance, and the American Revolution reinforced popular distaste for their pacific tendencies, further eroding the group’s political capital in the young American nation, Quaker investment in Indian affairs escalated through the beginning of the subsequent century. This was partly a byproduct of the relationships Quakers established with travelling delegations in the Mid-Atlantic. Even as their influence faded, Quaker ambassadors nevertheless attended treaty conferences throughout the late-colonial period. Moreover, even as Quaker dominance in the colony and state waned, Philadelphia Quakers continued to be key players among the city’s political and social elite and wielded heavy influence in Indian affairs.15 Historians have focused on the Philadelphia Quakers’ missions to the Oneida and Seneca, and the Baltimore Quakers’ missions to the Wyandot and Miami, at the expense of a critical engagement with their diplomatic role at home. Is it true that, during the 1790s and into the nineteenth century, Quakers prioritized their mission to establish working farms among the Senecas, Oneidas, Wyandots, and Miamis to model agricultural practices. Yet they were simultaneously devoting considerable attention and investment to the indigenous envoys in the capital. During the first decades of the republic, Quakers embedded themselves within the culture of diplomacy at the capital as gracious hosts, counselors of peace, and trusted educators. The Friends of both Philadelphia and Baltimore renewed their formal commitment and outreach to Native people by independently forming committees to “attend to the Indian Concern.”16 During the capital’s tenure at ­Philadelphia, the Quakers’ standing Indian Committee, along with other interested Friends, entertained, corresponded with, and provided gifts to nearly every deputation through the city. Not only did the President and Secretary of War sanction these activities, they relied upon them. Their extra-administrative p ­ osition 15

16

As Peter Silver argues, the violence of the Seven Years’ War led most whites in the midAtlantic to castigate Quakers for their friendly relationship and non-violent approach to Native peoples. Silver points to the fears of, language about, and actual violence of the Seven Years’ War as the key culprit in the unseating of Quakers in the Pennsylvania Assembly and their retreat from public office. Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: Norton, 2009), esp. 95–124. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, Indian Committee Records, 1791–1892, reel 1, and Letters and Miscellaneous, box 1 (1791–1802) and box 2 (1802–1815), aps. See also Jayne Ptolemy, “‘Our native soil’: Philadelphia Quakers and Geographies of Race, 1780–1838,” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2013). Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Indian Committee. Records, 1791–1892. American Philosophical Society. Mss. Film 824 (Twelve Reels), Reel 1, September 16, 1796. (Hereafter, Indian Committee Records.)

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notwithstanding, Quakers directly engaged Native diplomats in political discussions. The Indian Committee cultivated long-standing relations with deputations from the Iroquois confederation and other familiar nations. More ­vitally, they expanded the Quakers’ Native network through visiting diplomats. In particular, they initiated enduring correspondence with southern Indians, who first encountered Quakers during their diplomatic visits to Philadelphia. From these meetings, some nations developed friendly and sustained relations with the Philadelphia Quakers. The Quakers consistently played a part in hosting Native travelers, an important aspect of capital diplomacy dating back to the first delegations to the federal capital. During Philadelphia’s tenure as the federal capital, the Quaker Indian Committee hosted delegations from at least twelve nations, beginning with the Seneca delegation in 1791. Records of the Indian Committee indicate that between 1796 and 1800, committee members engaged with all nine delegations that arrived in the city, several of which were multi-national.17 Henry Drinker was among the Friends who were active in Indian affairs during the early 1790s, frequently treating with fellow Quakers and President Washington to discuss such matters as concerned negotiations, peace, and Quaker relations with Native nations. A founding member of the Indian Committee, Drinker hosted Committee meetings in his front parlor and opened his door to diplomats and boys heading to or from their host families and their homes.18 Native visitors found Quakers to be “very Cordial” hosts, expressing pleasure at Quaker commitment to peace—a message rather different than the one they often received from government officials.19 In 1792, visiting Cherokees were pleased to strike up a friendship with the Quakers. At the home of Isaac Jones, for instance, “a friend explained to them something of the nature of the Terrestrial Globe, by showing them thereone the way they travell’d from the Cherokee country to Charleston in South Carolina and thence over the great Water to Philadelphia.” The aforementioned Friend also took the time to point out “the whole boundary of the United States including the Nations of the Red People.” The delegates were particularly moved by their conversation with Mary Ridgeway and Jane Watson in the home of Isaac Jane, informing the committee afterward, according to a Quaker observer: “We did not b­ elieve that any women could say such wise things as our Sisters have said to us.” 17 18 19

Reel 1, September 16, 1796; November 18, 1796; December 17, 1796; December 23, [1796]; February 17, 1797; January 20, 1797; February 17, 1798; November 17, 1798; December 10, 1798; January 19, 1799; February 16, 1799, Indian Committee Records, aps,. Elizabeth Drinker, Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, ed. Elaine Forman Crane (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991), 536, 684, 769, 774, 779, 781, 807, 1020, 1599, 1652, 1713, 1840. Reel 1, December 26, 2796, Indian Committee Records, aps.

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Upon ­reflection, however, they mused that “when we consider that from Women come all men, we cannot wonder that they from who we all come should be as wise as us.”20 Friends devoted time to entertaining and conversing with other chiefs and other delegates in the city as well. Quakers, both men and women, welcomed Native diplomats to the capital time after time—opening their homes, Meeting House, and school buildings to talk about peace, agricultural improvement, religion, education and science, and to keenly advocate the rejection of spirituous liquors.21 When the Indian Committee convened on November 18, 1796, for example, they resumed an ongoing dialogue with the visiting Creeks and their agent, Benjamin Hawkins. That same year, a party of Creeks visited the capital. Previously unfamiliar with one another, the Quakers and Creeks initiated a relationship that deepened over subsequent visits and by post with the exchange of letters and gifts.22 Two years later, in late 1798, the Committee received “letters from the Creeks thanking them for the talk and gifts.” Among the latter were agricultural implements sent by the Committee to hasten the Creeks’ turn to “civilization.”23 At times, hosting indigenous delegations seemed to consume the whole attention not just of the Committee but of the city’s Quaker community in ­general. In fall 1796, as Washington wrapped up his presidency, the Indian Committee juggled visits from sixteen nations.24 With each, Quaker leaders discussed their sect’s peaceable principles, appealing for concord in the region. While they were hosting Creeks, the Committee learned that “some of the Shawnees, Chipaway and other Western Indians were now in this City.” Wrapping up their conference with the Creeks, the Committee invited the Western Indians “to a Conference.” With the help of two translators, Quakers and the Shawnees Blue Jacket and Red Pole, as well as Awsimut of the Pottawattamis and Black Chief of the Chippewas, discussed “the peaceable principles proffesed” by the Quakers and their hope for peace in the northwest. Before the deputation left the city, the parties met again. This time, nineteen Friends were present to dispense a variety of gifts “as a Testimony of the Continued Regard entertained by friends for the Indians,” which the Red Pole and his compatriots accepted with much gratitude. Like other delegations in Philadelphia, the ­visitors 20 21 22 23 24

Ibid., A Visit of Indians to Philadelphia. Reel 1, Indian Committee Records, aps. Also see Crane, Diary of Elizabeth Drinker. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sent seeds and farming implements to the Creeks over the next several years. Two Creek boys, Alexander Durant and James Bailey, were also left in Philadelphia to be educated by the Quakers. aps, Indian Committee Records, Reel 1. Ibid., November 17, 1798. These included delegations from the Miami, Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware, Ottawa, Chippewa, Potatotamei, Eel River, Weas, Kickapoo, Piankashaw, and Kaskakias.

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found the Quakers to be “very Cordial” hosts and expressed pleasure at their commitment to peace.25 Scenes like this played out time and again with Cherokees, Creeks, Chippewas, Choctaws, Senecas, Miamis, and others who arrived in the capital in the 1790s, a moment of heightened tension in the Ohio Country and Southeast. With their unique opportunity to mediate, the Committee convened often to welcome Native diplomats to the capital, bring them into their homes, and smooth over conflicts among different nations and with the U.S. Indeed, Quakers went beyond entertaining Natives, leveraging their influence as impartial non-governmental actors to discuss delicate political subjects. Whether meeting in private homes or larger locations, like the Fourth Street Meeting House, or touring facilities like William Warring’s schoolhouse, the Friends and Indians developed a rapport. After his visit, Little Turtle wrote to committee member Thomas Fisher “giving an account of his arrival in health & safety among his people,” and likewise, “of their receiving the articles provided for his nation & forwarded by the Committee in good order.”26 Both the Creeks and Miamis maintained their relationship with the Quakers in subsequent years, as did other nations. The “wise” talks of Quakers, male and female, commonly focused on peace—in a particularly pointed fashion when the Shawnees, Miamis, and other western nations visited in the 1790s—and the rejection of spirituous liquors. Quaker hospitality and professions of peace and equality did much to facilitate good relations in the capital, though not under formal federal directives.27 Government officials both sanctioned and relied upon Quaker initiatives. This was true also for Quaker mission projects to the Oneida and Seneca, as Kari Thompson recently has shown. Seeking formal approval, the Indian Committee turned to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering as they embarked upon their mission. Because diplomacy in the capital was the prerogative of the War Office, however, it was Secretary of War who was mostly closely attuned to the Quakers’ influence with visiting indigenous diplomats.28 When the War Office burned in 1800, destroying all of the records of that office, Secretary of War William Eustis turned to the Philadelphia Quakers for copies of their correspondence regarding their educating Native boys. Among their detailed 25 aps, Indian Committee Records, Reel 1, November 18, 1796; December 26, 1796. 26 aps, Indian Committee Records, Reel 1, [November] 17, 1798. 27 Ibid. 28 The period under consideration here saw five men in this position: Henry Knox (1789– 1794); Timothy Pickering (1795); James McHenry (1796–1800); Samuel Dexter (1800–1801); and Henry Dearborn (1801–1809). Kari Thompson, “Inconsistent Friends: Philadelphia Quakers and the Development of Native American Missions in the Long Eighteenth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 2013), 121–22, 157–58.

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response, Henry Drinker, Thomas Stewardson, and Thomas Wister noted that much of this communication was not recorded, citing their regular “verbal communications” with Secretaries Pickering and McHenry as well as the “several conferences our Committee had with President Washington” regarding their relationship with various Native nations.29 In any case, Quakers did right by the federal government. By all accounts, Native diplomats seemed impressed with their interactions with the Quakers. That Friends spoke of peace and fraternal harmony in a period when Indian-white violence was foremost in Native ambassadors’ minds deepened the two sides’ sense of mutual respect and collaboration. This admiration played a significant role in one of the most lasting features of Quaker-Indian relations in the federal capital: the schooling of Native children.

…

Young boys frequently accompanied delegations to the capital and played a unique role in diplomatic exchange. That they did so points to the persistence of Native diplomatic expectations and patterns of intercultural negotiation that dated to the earliest interactions between Europeans and Natives. During the early contact period, Europeans found value in exchanging boys with Native nations. Young Europeans who learned local languages and customs and developed networks in indigenous communities could facilitate trade, settlement, evangelism, and other colonial goals. By the early nineteenth century, however, boys brought to the American capital for education were part of a one-sided transaction.30 Although missionaries had established a host of schools in Native towns, diplomats continued to bring young boys—frequently their own relatives—to the capital to receive an American education and signal their nation’s good will toward, and cooperation with, the U.S.31 Initial visits to the capital, during its residence in New York, solidified the practice of educating Indian boys as a component of intercultural ­diplomacy, 29 30 31

Henry Drinker, Thomas Stewardson, Thomas Wister to William Eustis, December 31, 1801, WD LR IA 1812–12 78–93. aps, Indian Committee Records, Reel 1. The evidence from those who accompanied envoys is for boys. While some girls were sent to be educated in Philadelphia with Quaker families, their travel was arranged in other ways not directly through to diplomatic visits. This practice can traced back to Lane’s kidnapping of Manteo and Wanchese from Roanoke. Henry Spelman was sent to live among the Powhatan in an exchange in the early years of the Jamestown settlement, and the practice continued throughout the English settlements. It also occurred with other European nations, but English provided the most pressing precedent.

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along with the leading role Philadelphia’s Quakers would play in this custom. Among the 1790 deputation of Creeks to New York were two young men, relatives of the leader Alexander McGillivray, David Francis and David Tate.32 While both boys already spoke English well, McGillivray left his young relatives at the home of Secretary Knox to receive a “cultivated education.”33 The sym­ bolism in leaving one’s own to be educated among another culture or nation was clear; it was a political maneuver. Spanish officials keeping close tabs on the Creeks in New York, for one, did not miss the meaning. The Spanish official Carlos Howard, later meeting with McGillivray on the final leg of his trek back to Little Tallassee, pointed out that “to give over one’s nephew in that manner to the Americans was to manifest a decided predilection for that nation.” Ever keen to keep the appearance of relations balanced, McGillivray informed Howard that he was instead more inclined towards Spain and would be happy to “give over another nephew to be brought up as a Spaniard,” although it seems he never did. Knox, not inclined to care for the boys himself, promptly dispatched young Tate and Francis to Philadelphia to be educated by Quakers. There they remained in school for five years, a living symbol of the newly signed peace between the Creeks and the Americans.34 The arrangement proved satisfactory for both Knox and Philadelphia’s Friends. To advance their own agenda of improving American Indians’ circumstances, Quakers regularly offered to educate Native children. Shortly after the formation of the Indian Committee, Benjamin Hawkins, superintendent of Indian affairs south of the Ohio River and agent to the Creek Nation, visited a Committee meeting with “four lads of that [Creek] nation.” Hawkins was in town with a multinational deputation from the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations. Committee members as well as interested Friends James Pemberton and John Marselack listened as Hawkins “gave an account of the situation of those [Creek] people, and information of the friendly opinion entertained by them of our society,” before being encouraged to write to them 32

33 34

William Knox estimated Tate and Francis to be 12 and 16, though it is not clear who was which age. Howard mentions that the nephew left in NY was ten or twelve, so likely, if each report is correct David Tate, about twelve, was left with Knox. Francis was described in the newspapers be to “a young half breed, Kinsman to Col. M’Gillivray,” while Tate was described as McGillivray’s nephew. New York Journal, July 27, 1790; William Knox to Henry Knox, July 14, 1790, Papers of the War Department Online; Howard to Quesada, Sept. 24, 1790, in John Walton Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007 [1938]), 283. Howard to Quesada, Sept. 24, 1790, in Caughey, McGillivray, 283. It is unclear if any relative was subsequently sent to Howard. Gregory A. Waselkov, A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813–1814 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 45.

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and offer “some useful Mechanical or farmery tools.”35 The indigenous diplomats remained in the city for several weeks at the behest of the Committee. When the Committee convened again in November, the members considered the “circumstances of some Indian Children now in this City” and appointed several Friends to enquire into their situation and “in the interim to take such measures for the advantage of said Children as in their Judgments may appear proper, and Consonant to the sentiments of friends.”36 Given the local experience in boarding and educating Native boys, it is not surprising that the appointed Quaker men determined to take “under their care” two young Creeks, James Bailey and Alexander Durant. James and Alexander were placed with William Blakey for their education. Blakey was not a member of the Indian Committee but was an interested Friend, drawn to the matter of educating Indians.37 The boys remained with Blakey for four years, until the fall of 1800, at which point, federal official Samuel Hodgdon wrote,“being now desirous to return to their own Country, the Committee of Friends applied to me [Hodgdon] to direct their safe conveyance to their respective homes at the public expense.” The request was approved, and James and Alexander were sent by sea to Savannah; their passage and stores totaled $83.87.38 For the four years they lived with Blakey, the Indian Committee footed the bill for their “clothing scholing & diet,” as well as books and doctors fees, ranging from £30 to £74 per annum.39 Hosting and educating school-age Native children quickly became a common, if not standard, step of the diplomatic dance between Indian nations and the U.S. Quaker families throughout the Schuylkill Valley hosted and educated male and female indigenous children as they made their way back from the federal capital. Such a transaction could crown a successful diplomatic visit or salvage a potentially disastrous one. Upon concluding their visits, for instance, Seneca, Stockbridge, and Tuscarora diplomats left or later sent boys and girls,

35 36 37 38

39

Indian Committee, aps, Reel 1, September 16, 1796. Ibid., November 18, 1796. Blakey frequently attended Committee meetings. Ibid., October 21, 1796, November 18, 1796. Costs for their education were reported to the Treasurer of the Indian Committee at through 1800. In October of that year, Henry Drinker corresponded with the War Department to assist in returning the boys to Savannah then on to their homes. Samuel Hodgdon to Israel Whelen, October 27, 1800; William Simmons to Samuel Dexter, January 12, 1801, War Department Papers Online. In November 1797, £73.14s.2d. In December 1798 Blakey requested £51.18s.8d and in January 1800 £30.

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including some of their own children, to Philadelphia to be educated.40 Lacking formal federal directives or oversight, Quaker hospitality and professions of peace and equality nevertheless did much to facilitate good politics.41 Aware of—and in some cases ambivalent about—its own limitations, and recognizing the Friends’ influence, the nascent federal government relied on the hospitality of Philadelphia Quakers to educate Native boys as a way to stabilize the fluid mechanics of negotiation in an untested (and costly) process of capital diplomacy. Indeed, federal officials were only too happy to leave education to the city’s Quakers. While arranging the education of Bailey and Durant, the Committee noted: “The Officers of Government cannot be expected from their various important engagements, to afford much attention to the bringing up and instruction of such Lads,” were they to attempt to undertake the task themselves. Given the diplomatic significance of accepting boys that were brought by delegations to be educated, however, it was prudent to find proper surrogates. If Native diplomats saw the exchange of young children as a way to signal cooperation and good faith, federal officials viewed the instruction of key leaders’ young relations as a boon to the project of civilization that emerged under Washington and flourished during subsequent administrations. Indian Committee members found that “both the Secretary of War and Secretary of State, signified their desire that some Members of our religious Society would undertake to place these Boys in some sober exemplary family.” In this manner, “they may be trained up in a good degree of [innocence] & where endeavors would be used to ground them in sound moral principles,” both officials and Quakers hoped, “and instruct them in useful & common branches of Learning, such as Reading, Writing & Figures and particularly to lead them on in a gradual course of industry and knowledge of Husbandry.”42 Thus instructed, the boys would then serve as conduits of American culture and civilization upon their return home, modeling good republican behavior for other Native youth. Some of these boys did assume leadership roles as they aged and, in at least a handful of cases, made a return circuit to the federal capital in later years. Quakers took in one such child, Thomas Wilson, a nephew of Cherokee leader, Charles Hicks, who arrived in Philadelphia after Thomas with a subsequent delegation. Wilson boarded with Joseph Trimble from 1797 until 1801. After his 40

41 42

In 1797 four Stockbridge girls were brought (Margery Hendrick Aupaumut, Elizabeth Baldwin, Mary Peters, and Margery Jacobs), as were Catherine Peters and Leah Peters, both Tuscaroras. In 1791 Cornplanter wrote to the Quakers about the arrangements for his son and the son of Joseph Nicholas to be sent for education. aps, Indian Committee Records, Reel 1. Ibid., Committee to Benjamin Hawkins, October 24, 1796.

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return to the Cherokee nation, Wilson exchanged frequent correspondence with Henry Drinker, who had gotten to know Wilson well as one of the principal organizers of the education of Indian youths. Some children lived among Quaker families for years, forming bonds that lasted well beyond their formal education. Wilson’s experience with Quaker schooling and subsequent exchange with Drinker had an enduring impact. In later years he served as interpreter, secretary, and delegate to Washington on behalf of his nation.43

…

The national capital moved from Philadelphia in 1800, but the city remained critical to the federal undertaking of hosting Indians as well as the larger project of national self-fashioning to which these visits contributed. With its impressive collection of imposing buildings, ordered streets, and high culture, Philadelphia became an even more essential part of U.S. performance by providing a contrast to the new capital. Relocation to the murky swamps of Washington City in 1800 crippled federal officials’ ability to reenact the sociocultural routines that had developed in New York and Philadelphia. Washington’s glaring limitations as an urban and cultural center led officials to look elsewhere to model American society to visiting diplomats in the first years of the century. Officials sent many Native envoys on lengthy circuits of seaboard cities before or after settling down to business in the capital. These civilization tours endeavored to expose Indians to all of the cultural tableaus, technological feats, and vistas of American power that had been amply displayed in New York and Philadelphia but were decidedly lacking in Washington City. This had broader implications for diplomatic exchange in the early republic. By consigning social diplomacy largely to other cities, federal officials physically separated the social and political features of treating that, prior to 1800, had been thoroughly entwined. This spatial partitioning of federal-Indian diplomacy produced several unintended effects. Most noticeably, state and local officials, citizens, and ­extra-administrative bodies assumed more control over certain components of negotiations at the same time federal officials had less power to shape Native reception of the U.S.’s intended messages of superior civilization, martial prowess, and a burgeoning population. The Religious Society of Friends in Philadelphia had contributed to the give-and-take of capital visits in the 1790s, but it did so in close proximity to and in conversation with federal ­officials. 43 Ibid.; Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, 1466, 1468, 1646. Wilson’s letters do not appear in the archive.

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Once the capital relocated to Washington, Quakers continued to play an important role in Native visits. Their role expanded, in fact, as the Baltimore Yearly Meeting, with its proximity to the new capital, took on the mantle of hosting, educating, and negotiating with diplomats as they passed through Baltimore. Moreover, the sudden absence of a federal presence in Philadelphia gave Quakers even wider latitude as hosts. When General William Irvine, the superintendent of military stores, received word from Secretary of War Henry Dearborn that the Choctaws were on their way from Washington to Philadelphia in 1803, his only direction was to show them “whatever you may think proper” and make sure that the men were lodged at a “decent house.” The important men of the Society of Friends might also be alerted, Dearborn helpfully suggested as an aside, because the Quakers likely would be interested in meeting with the Choctaws for their own purposes. Perhaps more revealing of the depth to which the federal government relied on Philadelphia Quakers (and why), Dearborn hoped the Indian Committee might also foot the Natives’ bill during their stay in the city and bail out the cash-strapped federal government.44 Quaker hospitality cultivated affirmative diplomatic relationships in a particularly fraught period of federal-Indian relations, when misinterpretations were common and the threat of war constant. Under Jefferson, who exerted particular effort in inviting delegations and honing his role as the Great Father, federal officials continued to support Quakers’ multifaceted role in hosting envoys. When a party of Shawnees and Delawares returned home from the capital by way of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in 1802, they carried a letter from Secretary of War Henry Dearborn, instructing the superintendent of military stores in Philadelphia, William Irvine, on how these delegates were to be accommodated. The federal government gladly would cover any necessary expenses, Dearborn wrote. He quickly added, however, that “it is probable the Society of Quakers in Philadelphia may pay a part or the whole of the expenses incurred by the Indians at that place during their continuance there.”45 Quaker hospitality alleviated much of the financial burden incurred by the steady stream of Native envoys to the capital, but not all of it.

44 45

Henry Dearborn to General Irvine, Dec. 19, 1803, Secretary of War, Indian Affairs, Letters Sent, vol. A. He instructed Irvine to “discharge all necessary expenses incurred by them at Philadelphia not paid [by the Quakers],” and that the government would provide sufficient money to cover their travel expenses to Pittsburg. From there they were likely provided afresh by the agents at Pittsburg for the remainder of their journey. Henry Dearborn to William Irvine, Feb. 10, 1802, SW IA LS, vol. A, 159.

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Henry Drinker, a long-term member of the Indian Committee, along with his wife, Elizabeth, frequently answered the government’s call to meet with Indians arriving in the city.46 On several occasions, he brought diplomats or delegations into his own home. He did so not always before consulting Elizabeth, as on February 22, 1801, when returning home from a meeting he surprised his wife with “6 Indians with their interpreter … who all dined with us.” The guests included Sacharissa, Red Jacket, and Blue Sky, Tuscarora and Seneca delegates returning from Washington. Much as the wives of Washington performed heavy lifting in that city’s nascent political sphere, Elizabeth contributed to the hosting of Natives in her home and was pleased to note in her diary that her indigenous guests “behaved with great propriety” that February night. Satisfied with her own hospitality, she wrote that the diplomats “went away, apparently well pleased.”47 When a Miami and Potawatomi delegation passed through later that year, Henry Drinker again busied himself meeting with the travelers. Among the visitors was the famed Little Turtle, who had himself been to Philadelphia twice before when it was still the capital. After leaving the Drinkers’ home, Little Turtle and his compatriots headed to Baltimore, where they were welcomed and entertained by the Baltimore Yearly Meeting.48

…

Not only did the capital’s move to Washington in 1800 not diminish the part played by Philadelphia Quakers, the move expanded the diplomatic network to incorporate Baltimore Friends in the culture of diplomacy. Baltimore Quakers, like their Philadelphian counterparts, were concerned by the seemingly deteriorating condition of the continent’s Native people. Without the deep history with Natives that the Pennsylvanians harbored, however, the Baltimore Friends did not formally decide to “pay such attention to the interesting concern” of “the difficulties and distresses to which the Indian natives of this land were subject” until 1795, when they also formed a standing Indian Committee. To cover more ground, the Baltimore and Philadelphia Indian Committees 46

47 48

In 1795, Drinker was appointed to the Indian Committee, along with John Hunt of Darby, Joseph Sloan, Benjamin Iwett, James Cooper, Anthony Johnson, John Pierce, John Parrish, John Elliott, Joseph Sansom, William Savery, John Biddle, Thomas Harrison, Thomas Wistar, and John Hunt of Evesham. These men continued to constitute the committee over the next decade with limited change. aps, Indian Committee Records, Reel 1. Henry Drinker spent the next evening with the Seneca and Tuscarora and the Indian Committee. The delegates departed Philadelphia the following day, Feb. 24, 1801. Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, 2:1387–88. Diary of Elizabeth Drinker (Dec. 21, 1801), 2:1473; Memorial of Evan Thomas.

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d­ ivided among themselves the Indian nations to which they would direct their philanthropy. The northern nations fell under the purview of Philadelphia’s Friends; the nations of the Northwest went to Baltimore’s. This division applied to the mission work of the Quakers, however, and did not interfere with hosting delegations from any part of the continent.49 Fruitful interactions with visiting delegations in Philadelphia facilitated the Quakers’ efforts to expand their reform network beyond the city. In late December 1801, Elizabeth Drinker recounted: “My husband was this evening at the Indian Committee, five Indians there, and several women of our Society— The little Turtle Chief was there.” These visitors were an envoy of Miamis and Pottawatomies en route to Washington. Having previously conversed with the Philadelphia Friends regarding the cession of alcohol in their lands, Little Turtle sought support from the Friends in his nation’s attempt to ban liquor sales. The Committee in turn directed Little Turtle and his compatriots to the Baltimore Friends, who managed the mission activities of the Northwest. On their way to the capital, the group of Miamis, Pottawattamies, and Weas stopped in Baltimore.50 There the deputation met with the Indian Committee and discussed the causes for their visit to the capital. Little Turtle also “delivered to the society of Quakers, a speech which for strength of argument & good sense, would have done credit to any orator amongst the whites.” Once they finally arrived in Washington, Little Turtle addressed President Jefferson on behalf of the deputation. In addition to complaints regarding how the Treaty of Greenville was executed, the Miami leader expressed his and the other delegates’ desire to have farming implements sent to Fort Wayne for their nations. He also argued for the prohibition of the sale of “any Spiritous Liquors among their Red Brothers.” These were the same topics that Little Turtle had discussed in “several friendly talks with the People called Quakers,” and he wished the federal government to support these requests. In his reply, Jefferson acceded to the deputations’ requests and expressed “pleas[ure] with what you said to him respecting strong drink.” Likewise, the champion of the yeoman ideal agreed to “order ploughs and hoes to be furnished at Fort Wayne for supplying his red children.”51 Little Turtle used his relationship with the Philadelphia and Baltimore Quakers to

49 50 51

Society of Friends, Baltimore Yearly Meeting, 1805. A Brief Account of the Proceedings … for Promoting the … Civilization of the Indian Natives (Baltimore: Cole & Howes, 1805), 5–6. Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, 2:1473; aps, John Pershouse Papers, B.P43, J[ohn] P[ershouse] to [James] Pershouse, February 26, 1802. Conference held with the Little Turtle and other Indian Chiefs, WD LS IA Vol A 135–142.

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bolster his efforts to ban the sale of liquor to Indians, perhaps receiving counsel from the Quakers on how best to frame his appeal to Jefferson.52 Baltimore Quakers also took up the mantle of educators after the capital moved to Washington City. By 1803, Pitman Colbert, son of Chickasaw leader Major George Colbert, was boarding with Quaker schoolmaster Joel Wright in Frederick County, Maryland. Pitman stayed with Wright at least through 1805.53 Major Colbert had met with Quakers in Philadelphia as a member of delegations in 1794 and 1796, and he clearly felt comfortable enough with the encounters to entrust the Friends with his son. In an effort to solidify alliances and further their civilization agenda, officials at the War Department wrote to the Mohican Captain Hendricks to entice him to “send one of your sons and two other young lads such as the chiefs shall agree on” to be educated by the Baltimore Friends, adding, “the U.S. will pay their board for a reasonable time.” It seems Hendricks complied with the request. In spring 1811, Hendricks’ brother, Solomon, wrote to the department “relative to the Indian Boys, who are under the care of the benevolent Society of Friends.” Philip Thomas of Baltimore sponsored or arranged their education as well as that of several other boys, including a Choctaw youth, Thomas Jefferson.54

…

Native diplomats and a broad spectrum of white Americans together formulated a set of diplomatic protocols, which persisted throughout the early republic with fairly modest changes on the ground. In their contributions to capital negotiations, federal officials, American citizens, and extra-administrative groups like the Quakers stressed their nation’s civilization, might, and population, though which messages received more emphasis differed according to group 52 53

54

The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, Dec. 21, 1801, 1473. In 1802 a delegation of Chickasaws arrived in the capital with no interpreter and little came of the visit, however, War Department officials recorded that the delegation include a boy—perhaps Pitman Colbert. Wright, clerk to the Baltimore Indian Committee, left Maryland in 1806 to remove to the Ohio country. It is possible that his move terminated Pitman Colbert’s education. See WD LS IA Vol A, Henry Dearborn to Return J Meigs, November 23, 1802; Samuel Mitchell, July 9, 1803, 374–76; Joel Wright, January 12, 1804, 437; vol B. George Colbert, September 24, 1805. In 1818, the Cherokee Charles Hicks sent two additional boys, including his son Looney, to be educated—it is likely they too were hosted and instructed by Baltimore Quakers. War Department to Capt. Hendricks, January 30th 1809, WD IA LS vol b 425; George Graham to George Gaines, April 3, 1816, WD LS IA vol. C, 319; War Department to Philip E Thomas, April 5 1811 WD LS IA vol C 74; War Department to Philip E Thomas, April 24, 1811. WD LS IA vol C 78. Charles Hicks to Looney May 22 1818 WD LR IA 1818.

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and time. On their end, Native delegates advanced their own participation in informal diplomacy with an array of public performances, including parades, dances, and more individualized forms of self-presentation. Engagement with Quakers was one part of a much larger political strategy, and for some delegations it was a more important aspect than for others. Over the years, Native diplomats collected an archive of experiences from their visits, from which subsequent deputations could draw. For instance, relationships between the mid-Atlantic Quakers and southern Indian nations forged during the early years of the republic set the stage for Friends’ outsized role in the contests over Indian Removal after 1820. Key to this archive of experience was having a delegate present who could translate, linguistically and otherwise. Indeed, most of these deputations included at least one member who was educated in missionary schools, spoke, and wrote fluent English.55 As one such intermediary, Thomas Wilson, the Cherokee youth who had been schooled by Quakers in Philadelphia in the late 1790s and later returned to Washington as a seasoned delegate, embodied the convergence of educational, religious, and political ambitions at the core of the culture of capital diplomacy. 55

For the education of John Ridge, John Ross, and Elias Boudinot, see Thurman Wilkins, Cherokee Tragedy: The Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 119–53. For the education of John McDonald (Choctaw), see Herman J. Viola, Thomas L. McKenney, Architect of America’s Early Indian Policy, 1816–1830 (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1974), 40–41, 44–46, 127–34. John W. Quinny and Solomon Hendricks, both Stockbridge leaders, were educated by Quakers at a boarding school in New York. James W. Oberly, A Nation of Statesmen: The Political Culture of the StockbridgeMunsee Mohicans, 1815–1972 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 23.

Chapter 7

“The Great Spirit Hears All We Now Say”: Philadelphia Quakers and the Seneca, 1798–1850 Ellen M. Ross 1 Introduction This paper considers two generations of a Quaker family who worked closely with Seneca communities in Cattaraugus and Allegany over a period extending from 1798 until about 1850. Quaker farmer Halliday Jackson (1771–1835), who lived with the Seneca in Allegany from 1798–1800, maintained a connection with the Seneca until his death in 1835. Halliday’s son John Jackson (1809?– 1855) and his daughter-in-law Rachel Tyson Jackson (1807–1883), educators, reformers, women’s rights and peace activists, continued Halliday’s work. In this chapter, I highlight two points that stand out regarding the Jackson family. First, these Quakers were aware that what they called a “war of extermination,” was being waged against Indigenous communities. Over the course of fifty years the two generations of this Quaker family bore witness to and protested against White greed and its devastating impact upon Seneca and other Indian communities. Second, in spite of their acute awareness of the persecution of Indigenous communities and their sustained and vocal protest against it, these Quakers themselves were implicated in perpetuating patterns of misunderstanding and mistreatment of Indians. For fifty years, they largely put their energies into the strategy of “civilization” that was built on a conviction that the Seneca should change and take up “the ways of good and honest white people,” as a means to survival.1 The Jacksons and other Quakers working with them persisted in advocating for the “civilization” strategy even in the face of abundant evidence that the process was not advancing as they had imagined it would. 1 Halliday Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives: Or, a brief view of the friendly conduct of William Penn towards them in the early settlement of Pennsylvania; the subsequent care of the Society of Friends in endeavoring to promote peace and friendship with them by pacific measures; and a concise narrative of the proceedings of the yearly meeting of Friends, of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and parts adjacent, since the year 1795, in promoting their improvement and gradual civilization (Philadelphia: Marcus Gould, 1830), 30.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_008

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This study of Quaker connections with the Seneca over two generations is a case study of allyship: a study of how it can go right, and of how it can go wrong, even when founded on the best of intentions. It calls attention to a pattern of blind spots that can emerge when there is a discrepancy or discordance between foundational beliefs and the strategies adopted in working for particular ends. Specifically, this essay is a study of the reverberating impact of the concept of “civilization” as the dominant model for assimilation as a means of Seneca survival. Used at first with an awareness of the ambiguity of its aptness, “civilization” was used with unquestioning certitude as time progressed. This history suggests that even the most radical reformers were sometimes not as consistently radical as they might have been, in part because of their blind spots. They were held back or trapped by the very categories they used to frame their strategies for change, categories ensnared in the limited social vision of their day that their fundamental principles might have led them to question. Some argue that the strategy of “civilization” could not have been implemented without the participation of Seneca leaders such as Chief Warrior Cornplanter. According to the Quakers, Cornplanter and other Seneca Chiefs asked for assistance from President Washington and from the Quakers. As Jill Kinney argues, “Senecas were not passive players in the saga of their cultural change, but very active participants.” There is evidence that the Quaker plan was regarded as positive and important for some Seneca, and it is illuminating to consider how “Senecas used Quaker allies.”2 At the same time the voices of Seneca who resisted this so-called “civilization” and all it entailed come through to us in the stories the Quakers tell.3 2

Prophetic Voice for a Renewed America

Quakers were among the early Euro-Americans who spoke and wrote in protest of the systematic mistreatment of Indians as settlers expanded their geographic range. For almost forty years, from 1760 until 1798, the journals of the New Jersey Quaker minister Joshua Evans expressed distress about the seizure of Indian lands by Whites, the displacement of Indians, and the widespread decimation of Indian communities. Evans contrasted an alternative vision of 2 Jill Kinney, “‘Letters, Pen, and Tilling the Field’: Quaker Schools Among the Seneca Indians on the Allegany River, 1798–1852” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2009), 247. 3 The Quaker penchant for keeping and publishing records means that extensive documentation of a multiplicity of Seneca voices and perspectives remains, resources that call for further study.

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America, one that would hold all people in equal regard. He retained unwavering confidence that God was on the side of the oppressed: “way will be made for their liberation.”4 He wrote that in Brotherton, some years back, “Christian white settlers” had rented land from the Indians and then refused to leave. Rather than helping to evict the squatters, government officials encouraged the Indians to sell the land. Evans reflected on what would have happened if the roles had been reversed: “How do we suppose the White people would remove Indians, if they were to come intruding and settle on the real property of the Whites? Would it not be likely that the Method of expelling them by sword and gun would be adopted?”5 Evans understood the oppression of Indians as one catastrophic effect, among the many damaging effects, of a developing market system that perpetuated and was fundamentally dependent upon war. Evans described White treatment of Indians as unjust and a betrayal of the Christian responsibility to “observe equity, one towards another in every nation.” His focus was on changing the minds and behaviors of White people, making them aware of their greed and their unjust treatment of Indians. 3

Quaker Yearly Meeting Indian Committees and a Strategy for Indian Survival

For the Philadelphia Quakers sending Jackson and his companions to the Allegany Seneca, the vision was much more narrow. The Jacksons worked with the Seneca under the auspices first of the Indian Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (pym), a committee appointed in 1795, and whose formal name clearly expressed its stated purpose: “Committee Appointed by the Yearly Meeting of Friends of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, etc. for Promoting the Improvement and

4 Evans MS Journal 10/4/1796–6/29/1798, Joshua Evans Papers, RG 5/190, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, transcribed by Aaron Brecher (MS C), 8th 12 month 1796, 8. On the Quaker mission to the Oneida, see Karim M. Tiro, “‘We Wish to Do You Good’: The Quaker Mission to the Oneida Nation, 1790–1840,” Journal of the Early Republic 26 (Fall 2006), 353–376. On Evans, see Ellen Ross, “‘Liberation is Coming Soon’: The Radical Reformation of Joshua Evans (1731–1798),” in Quakers & Abolition, ed. Brycchan Carey and Geoff Plank (Chicago: University of Illinois Pr., 2014), 15–29. He had a sense of what Roxanne DunbarOrtiz observes, “Euro-American colonialism, an aspect of the capitalist economic globalization, had from its beginnings a genocidal tendency” (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Pr., 2014), 8. 5 Evans MS Journal 7/29/1795–12/17/1796, Joshua Evans Papers, RG 5/190, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, transcribed by Aaron Brecher (MS E), 7th 1 month 1796, 31 (see also MS E, 7th 11 month 1795, 15).

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gradual civilization of the Indian natives.”6 Each of the three Jacksons served at some point as a member of the Indian Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, as well as on subcommittees. John and Rachel were also members of the Joint Committee on Indian Concerns, a Committee formed in 1838 when the Indian Committees of the four Yearly Meetings of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Genesee, and New York, came together in order to try to keep the Ogden Land Company from acquiring Seneca lands.7 While predicated on a respect for Indians and a perception of a moral imperative to work on their behalf, the focus of the Indian Committees was not so much on the underlying principles of the equality of all before God, as on the particular strategy adopted to seek to save Indian communities from what Quakers perceived as a real threat to their survival. By the early 1800s, many of the leading Quakers concerned about Indians saw only two alternatives. The first was that the relentlessness of the displacement and killing of Indians would lead to their disappearance. The second alternative was that Indians would take up White practices of agriculture and education that could preserve them from threatened extermination. Facing what they perceived to be a likelihood that the Seneca would disappear, Quaker leadership of the Indian Committees made a strategic choice to focus on teaching their European model of agriculture and education as a means to ensure the “civilization” and survival of Indigenous communities.8 In their writings and practice across a spectrum of concerns, the second generation of Jacksons embraced a comprehensive and revolutionary vision of social change in which personal moral transformation was the key to social transformation that would usher in a renewed America. By that time, however, the practical strategy of “civilization,” with its hierarchy and narrowness 6 Kari Thompson, “Inconsistent Friends: Philadelphia Quakers and the Development of Native American Missions in the Long Eighteenth Century” (PhD diss., Univ. of Iowa, 2013), 120–132. 7 During this same period, Rachel Jackson also worked with the Philadelphia Quaker reformer Mary Jeanes, also a leading advocate for Indian rights, author of the 1838 A Plea for the Indians, and among the Quakers from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting who worked with the Seneca in advocating for their land claims over and against the Ogden Land Company. 8 For excellent studies of the wider implications of Quaker agricultural and educational practices in Indigenous communities, see, among others, 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,” Journal of the Early Republic 19 (Winter 1999), 601–628; Tiro, “Quaker Mission to the Oneida Nation,” 353–376; Diane B. Rothenberg, “Friends Like These: An Ethnohistorical Analysis of the Interaction Between Allegany Senecas and Quakers, 1798–1823” (PhD diss., The City University of New York, 1976); Kinney, “Quaker Schools Among the Seneca Indians”; Thompson, “Philadelphia Quakers and the Development of Native American Missions.”

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of scope, was so firmly entrenched in the dynamics of Quaker-Seneca relationships, that it overrode the visionary, integrated perspective on reform articulated in other areas of the life and writings of the Jacksons. The vision motivating the Indian Committee was not to persuade White people to disavow their greed for land and to awaken in them a moral imperative to appreciate and honor the common humanity of all people. Rather, in the effort to halt the decimation of Indian communities, the Quaker Indian Committees focused on Indigenous communities as the loci of change, and embraced and promulgated practices, particularly in education and agriculture, that belonged to what the Quakers understood to be “civilization.” For two generations, Quaker religious belief sustained the Jacksons’ advocacy for Indian rights, protests against genocidal practices, and support for Seneca autonomy, and, at the same time, supported their unrelenting adoption of particular visions of agriculture and education as measures of “civilization” that contributed to the suppression of Seneca culture and traditions. 4

The First Generation: Halliday Jackson (1771–1835)

In 1798, Halliday Jackson (1771–1835), a Quaker from New Garden, Chester County in Pennsylvania, responded to a call from the Indian Committee for people to travel to Allegany to “instruct” the Seneca about agriculture and education.9 He went with Henry Simmons and Joel Swayne, and from 1798 to 1800 he resided in Genesinguhta, a town located within the forty-two square miles of land reserved for the Seneca Nation at the Treaty of Big Tree of 1797.10 Nine 9

10

“In 1798, the Philadelphia Quakers established a mission among the Allegany Seneca in southwestern New York, whose reservation boundary lines had just been drawn several months before” (Rothenberg, “Interaction Between Allegany Senecas and Quakers,” 8). For a description of the Cattaraugus and Allegany locations and Indian communities to whom the Quakers sent delegations, see Merle H. Deardorff and George S. Snyderman, eds., “A Nineteenth-Century Journal of a Visit to the Indians of New York,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 100 (December 1956), 588–589. See also, Anthony F.C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Vintage Books, 1969). (Jackson’s writings do provide abundant evidence that the Seneca did already have successful agricultural traditions, so, e.g., as Jackson recalled the Quakers’ arrival in 1798, he noted, “The women of Cornplanter’s village, to show their hearty and good will in the undertaking, had previously made a collection of some seed – corn, potatoes, beans, squashes, and a variety of other garden seeds which they presented as a present to Friends, observing ‘that it was very hard to come so far and have nothing to begin with’” [Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 32].) Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 588, 590. The final survey of the Allegany reservation had not been completed when the Quakers arrived in 1798, and

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miles from the Seneca Chief Cornplanter’s town Jackson and Joel Swayne established and ran what amounted to an “agricultural demonstration center,” or “model farm,” and Henry Simmons taught school.11 In June of 1800 Halliday returned to Pennsylvania, married Jane Hough in 1801, and moved to Darby, Pennsylvania where he lived until his death in 1835.12 The journal Halliday kept of his experiences with the Allegany Seneca, teaching agriculture and living himself as a farmer, formed the basis for his later writings.13 His journal is best known for its records of the visions of the Seneca leader Handsome Lake. As Anthony Wallace put it, “ [Halliday Jackson’s journal] bears the same relation to the Handsome Lake Religion as would a newly discovered eyewitness account of the Sermon on the Mount to Christianity.”14 Halliday Jackson made periodic visits to Allegany and Cattaraugus in the company of other Indian Committee Quakers in 1806, 1816, and 1820. Halliday Jackson’s 1806 Visit to the Seneca in Allegany and Cattaraugus In addition to writing an account of his 1798–1800 sojourn with the Seneca, Halliday Jackson kept a journal of the 1806 return visit (by which time the Quakers had moved from Genesinguhta to a new site, Tunessasa). He went to visit the Quaker delegation that was settled there, including Joel Swayne, 4.1

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many Indians were still living on Cornplanter’s personal grant who would move once the Allegany boundaries were established (George S. Synderman, “Halliday Jackson’s Journal of a Visit Paid to the Indians of New York (1806),” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 101 (December 1957), 565–588. Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 590; Kinney, “Quaker Schools Among the Seneca Indians,” 24. In his journal of 1800 Jackson described his work as to “teach [the Indians] to Plow to Sow, & to reap that they might eat the Goodly things of the land, and also to instruct them in the use of the mechanical Instruments and how to take care of their Flocks and their Herds that they might have meat in abundance & bread without scarcity” (Anthony F. C. Wallace, “Halliday Jackson’s Journal to the Seneca Indians, 1798–1800,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 19 [April 1952], 127.) Thirty years later he explained that the mission was “in order to improve the condition of the Indian natives, and to teach them the ways of good and honest white people, that they, with their wives and children, might be enabled to live more comfortably, and be relieved from the distresses and difficulties to which they had been subjected by their old habits and modes of living” (Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 30). Jane H. Jackson died in 1830 and Halliday married Ann Paschall in 1833. Wallace, “Jackson’s Journal to the Seneca Indians,” 117–147; and Anthony F. C. Wallace, “Jackson’s Journal to the Seneca Indians, 1798–1800: Part ii,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 19 (July 1952), 325–349. Wallace, “Halliday Jackson’s Journal,” 120. See also Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca and Elisabeth Tooker, “On the New Religion of Handsome Lake,” Anthropological Quarterly, 41 (October 1968), 187–200.

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Jacob Taylor, Hannah Jackson, and Benjamin and Rachel Coope, and to visit the Seneca communities at Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Tonawanda.15 Jackson noted the many new settlements and small villages, cleared land, cornfields, increase of livestock and new houses, the markers of progress toward “civilization.” Like many Quakers, Jackson focused on cleanliness as a measure of “civilization” and noted that Seneca women had learned to make soap. He observed that in the 1806 visit houses were much “cleaner” than in earlier years. Jackson interpreted some of what he saw as support for the “civilization” project rather than as possible evidence of general resistance to it: “and one thing I several times observed which I thought something of a novelty among Indians [and an] indication that they were beginning to be asham’d of their dirty way of living [was] that when the women saw us approaching their Doors they immediately began to sweep their houses.”16 Halliday Jackson’s high regard for the Seneca is conveyed in his journals and letters, as well as in the journals of his travelling companions and of Rachel Coope. One of his companions, John Philips, also kept a journal of the 1806 trip to Allegany and Cattaraugus.17 Halliday Jackson and his travelling companions were warmly received: “we came soon to the upper Settlements of Indians, they came Running out to meet us men women and Children … some of them knew halliday and began to laugh and Look very pleasant.” Halliday Jackson noted also as they passed through the villages, “Many of the Indians came to Shake hands with us as we rode along expressing their Joy to see us, in their usual way of exaltation.”18 Philips recorded spending “the afternoon pleasantly 15

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Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 593. (In 1803 Quakers had purchased 692 acres from the Holland Company “on Tuknessasah Creek … two miles above Genesanguhta and about ½ mile from the Indian Reservation” [quoted in Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 593]. Both Jackson’s and Philip’s journals address the surveying of the property, the deed for which was not executed until December 5, 1806 [Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 593].) Synderman, “Halliday Jackson’s Journal (1806),” 576, 578. “Some Account of My Journey made to the Indians in 9th Mo 1806 by John Philips, Halliday Jackson & Isaac Bonsal,” in Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 582–612. Synderman, “Halliday Jackson’s Journal (1806),” 584. Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 598, 600. Philips records a number of stories of Indians running with the Quakers who rode on horseback, “travel[ling] quite as fast on foot as we could go” (e.g., Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 607). Philips told the story of one of the Seneca chiefs, Sunfish, who “Ran on to pilot us several miles quite as fast as we could follow.” On another occasion, commenting that they had gotten a good night’s sleep “as we were tired of walking,” Philips remarked that Chief Halftown “allowed we walk[ed] just Like Children that were learning how to walk” (Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 598, 600). Synderman, “Halliday Jackson’s Journal (1806),” 572.

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Discoursing with many Indians that came to see us,” in Genesinguhta, the town where Halliday Jackson had lived from 1798–1800.19 In his Sketch of the Manners, Customs, Religion and Government of the Seneca Indians in 1800 (published in 1830), among other topics, Jackson commented at length and with admiration on the manner of communication among the Seneca.20 Still, it appears that Quaker admiration for Seneca customs did not, at least in the Jackson family-related official documents, raise any substantial questions about the advisability of the Quaker model of “civilization.” The expression of Seneca dissent from Quaker practices and the responses on the part of Quakers and other Seneca is one example of the type of stories in Quaker records that point to the multiple and conflicting attitudes among the Seneca themselves about Quaker ideas of “civilization.” In a Council Seneca Johnson Silverheels spoke, Since we have found out the mind of the Great Spirit we think he is best pleased when people use one another well and he is pleased when people give one another victuals when they go to their houses Let them be hungry or not/ and this is the way we Do/we always give one another victuals/ when our people go to the mills or come from other towns and gets hungry if you would give them victuals it would be very pleasing to us as it is the Custom amongst ourselves / we have now told you our mind plainly …21 In reply, Quakers acknowledged Silverheels’ comments, but affirmed their own commitment to continuing the practices he had objected to, and made no apparent effort to consider his perspective. Some Seneca feared the consequences of Quaker disapproval of Silverheels’ speech. The next morning, Cornplanter’s sister, Gaynt’-go-gwus, identified as a “principal woman” among the Seneca, came to see Philips and his companions, “and mentioned a great deal of uneasiness Concerning Silver heels Speech in council/ that she had been talking with some of the Indians/ that she thought his Speech was very bad &c/ that She was afraid we would tell our fr[iend]s at home But we might tell them what She said with more to the same effect.” The following morning another Chief, Spotted Coat, came to say the same thing and concluded that “he hoped we would [not] write it [Silverheels’ 19 20 21

Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 598–599; 601. Halliday Jackson, Sketch of the Manners, Customs, Religion, and Government of the Seneca Indians in 1800 (Philadelphia: Marcus Gould, 1830), 15. Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 605.

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speech] Down or Read it in the Great Council in philadelphia for it was Quite too foolish to be Read there.”22 If the Quakers did write it down he wanted them to write down his words as well. Moments of tension in the texts of Halliday Jackson and other Quakers reflect a clash of interpretations, of cultures, and of strategies, and are moments when we can perceive that the Quakers were listening, but missed important opportunities to hear Indian communication.23 In 1830, thirty years after his two-year sojourn in Allegany, Jackson published two books, both deeply informed by his time with the Seneca. 1830 was a crucial year: Congress’s passage and Andrew Jackson’s signing of the Indian Removal Act, “An Act to provide for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi,” that would dramatically increase the forcible removal and emigration of Indians from their lands.24 Halliday Jackson wrote to raise the alarm about what was happening with Indigenous communities. Publicly, and with a concerted effort, he called upon White people to take responsibility for what was happening to Indigenous communities and to honor treaties that had been made with Indian Nations. Halliday Jackson’s Sketch of the Manners, Customs, Religion and Government of the Seneca Indians in 1800 and Civilization of the Indian Natives William Bartram’s Travels, published in 1791, is an important backdrop for understanding Halliday Jackson’s Sketch of the Manners, Customs, Religion and Government of the Seneca Indians in 1800 published in 1830, as well as for his Civilization of the Indian Natives, published the same year.25 The link with Bartram lent a gravitas to Jackson’s work, and placed it within a well-respected 4.2

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Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 605. See, e.g., Mary Black-Rogers, “Varieties of ‘Starving’: Semantics and Survival in the Subartic Fur Trade, 1750–1850,” Ethnohistory 33 (Autumn 1986), 353–383. See e.g., Steve Inskeep, Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab (New York: Penguin Books, 2015). In addition to the similarity in title and topics, at times there are enough similarities in wording to suggest that Jackson was consulting with Bartram’s Travels as he wrote. This is not to suggest that Jackson was simply repeating what Bartram wrote. In fact, Jackson’s work is a thoughtful recording of what he himself observed. As is Bartram, Jackson is regarded as a respectable enthographer (Wallace, “Jackson’s Journal to the Seneca Indians,” 120). For Bartram, see Francis Harper, ed., The Travels of William Bartram (Athens, GA: Univ. of Georgia Pr., 1998) and Gregory A. Waselkov and Kathryn E. Holland Braund, eds., William Bartram on the Southeastern Indians (Lincoln, NE: Univ. of Nebraska Pr., 1995). Note that Jackson’s works do not include the stories challenging who the “civilized” people really are that appeared periodically throughout Bartram’s Travels.

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tradition of advocacy for Indians. As in Bartram’s Travels, the overall direction of Halliday Jackson’s texts testified to the virtue and morality of Indigenous peoples; called on White society to pay attention to the plight of Indians whose survival was endangered by the growth of the White population; and charged Whites to uphold their moral obligations to the Indian Nations, with whom they shared a common humanity. Although after thirty years it was clear that the Quaker strategy of “civilization” had barely, if at all, turned the tide toward Indian well-being, Jackson did not propose a new strategy, but rather seemed to embrace the “civilization” strategy more emphatically and systematically. In the introduction to Seneca Indians in 1800, the body of which he had written many years earlier, Jackson identified a time of crisis for Indian tribes in the South. The resolution of the crisis would have profound implications for Indians closer to Pennsylvania, and for the Seneca in particular. In the book, Jackson urged the United States to honor its treaties, warning his readers that if George Washington’s promise to “protect the Indians in their rightful possessions” was abrogated in the South in order to “favour the claim of any individual state,” this would open the floodgates, and the “fate of the Indian [would be] sealed.”26 Reminding his readers of Indians’ kindnesses to White people when Whites were “strangers in a strange land,” Jackson warned that Indian land loss in southern and western states and across the United States should lead people to “fear for [Indians’] safety.”27 He argued that the relationship of White people and the government to Indigenous communities should adhere to a uniform, not partial and fragmentary, principle of honoring Indian land rights consistently.28 With some echoes of the prophetic gesture of the likes of Joshua Evans, in the opening of the Seneca Indians in 1800 Jackson invoked the biblical narrative of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21), with its warning that those who take 26 Jackson, Seneca Indians in 1800, 2. 27 Jackson, Seneca Indians in 1800, 2. 28 See Berkley Carmine and Liza Minno, “How to Support Standing Rock and Confront What it Means to Live on Stolen Land,” (http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/support -­standing-rock-confront-means-live-stolen-land/) “A stance of self-determination signifies that indigenous nations pre-date the existence of the United States and aren’t always looking for recognition from the colonizing force. Rights and ‘equality’ frameworks are most often based on the idea of the individual as the social actor and view equality under the law for all individuals as the end goal. Many indigenous frameworks don’t fully fit this and are centered more on the ideas of the collective (nation, tribe, people), as opposed to the individual. They also prioritize responsibility (to land, and future generations) as opposed to rights.” This is an interesting point to bring into the conversation about how Quakers and Senecas talked about relationships to land in the nineteenth-century.

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a­ nother’s ancestral land will face divine wrath. Although in Civilization of the Indian Natives, Jackson expressed the hope that the “rulers of our country … may preserve inviolate the faith of the United States,” he concluded with a somber warning: “for it is an incontrovertible truth, ‘that national evils will produce national calamities.’”29 In the Seneca Indians in 1800, Jackson reiterated the stipulations of the Treaty of Canandaigua of November 1794 that described the boundaries of the Seneca nation and recorded the agreement of the United States that lands should remain undisturbed “for the use and enjoyment” of the Seneca “until they choose to sell the same.” He reprinted selections from the Seneca Chief Warrior Cornplanter’s speeches to George Washington in 1790 when Cornplanter, whom Jackson described as one of the greatest orators of all time, and other Seneca Chiefs, including Great Tree and Halftown, visited Philadelphia to seek to retain their lands.30 Among the speech selections Halliday Jackson printed is one that had been signed by Cornplanter, Halftown, and Great Tree, addressing George Washington. It voiced a key concept Jackson sought to set before his readers in order to stir their moral indignation at the mistreatment of Indian Nations: Father, when we saw that we had been deceived [by the English], and heard the invitation you gave us to draw nigh to the fire which you had kindled, and talk with you concerning peace, we made haste towards it. You then told us that we were in your hand, and that by closing it, you could crush us to nothing – and you demanded from us a great country as the price of that peace you had offered to us, as if our want of strength had destroyed our rights [italics mine] … were the terms dictated to us by your commissioners reasonable and just?31 Halliday Jackson wrote with a purpose of affirming Indian rights to land: “a want of strength” does not constitute a relinquishment of lawful rights and is never a warrant for a more powerful group to seize or otherwise duplicitously acquire another group’s possessions. In speeches dated February 7, 1791, Cornplanter, Halftown, and Great Tree argued for the return of their lands: “All the land we have been speaking of, belonged to the Six Nations. No part of it ever belonged to the King of England, 29 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 28. 30 Jackson, Seneca Indians in 1800, 3. See discussion of the 1790 visit in Deardorff and Snyderman, “Nineteenth-Century Journal,” 584–585. 31 Jackson, Seneca Indians in 1800, 3.

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and he could not give it to you. The land we live on, our fathers received from God, and they transmitted it to us for our children and we cannot part with it.” In his reply to the Seneca, George Washington told them that he could not go back and change what happened earlier, but he assured them that from that point forward, “The general government will never consent to your being defrauded, but will protect you in all your rights … in the future you cannot be defrauded of your lands – that you possess the right to sell, and the right of refusing to sell your lands – that, therefore, the sale of your lands in future, will depend entirely upon yourselves.” In 1830, Halliday Jackson included these extracts from the speeches “to show the strong point of view in which the faith of the United States was pledged to protect the Indians in their rightful possessions,” and he called on his contemporaries to honor the historical promises.32 Jackson reprinted the Seneca Chiefs’ request to Washington that the Seneca be taught to plow, grind corn, be given tools for building “more comfortable and durable houses,” that Seneca children be taught to read and write, and that Seneca women be taught to spin and weave. He printed George Washington’s reply, which said that if this is what the Seneca Nation wanted, then Washington would find the means to make it possible.33 Jackson then set out the strategy of “civilization” that had guided Quaker interactions with Seneca for the previous thirty years, and would continue to do so for the next twenty years.34 Halliday Jackson’s second book, Civilization of the Indian Natives, detailed the growth of “the empire of civilization” among the Indians.35 The book was steadfast in its defense of Indians, “children of one universal parent, who is no respecter of persons but regards with equal care all nations36 Throughout, Halliday presented Indians as pacific, actively seeking to live in peace with White people,37 increasingly pursuing the “innocent employments of the pastoral and agricultural life.”38 Jackson included stories about Indians whom he described as “unfriendly to civilization,” and he noted Indians’ observations that some Quakers were just as land greedy as others who had defrauded the Indians.39 (Just as some Quakers built their fortunes on the slave economy, some Quakers built their fortunes on water- and land-related development, including the railroad 32 Jackson, Seneca Indians in 1800, 3–9. 33 Jackson, Seneca Indians in 1800, 8. 34 Jackson, Seneca Indians in 1800, 11. 35 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 28. 36 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 3. 37 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, e.g., 25, 65. 38 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 3, 28. 39 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 33–34, 53.

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i­ ndustry.) Some Seneca expressed opposition to school education for children, suggesting that it would make them “more liable to be corrupted by bad white people.”40 Stories of attempts by land speculators and avaricious Whites to purchase land and displace the Seneca appear repeatedly throughout Jackson’s narration of the history. Jackson detailed a variety of ways Quakers worked with the Seneca to prevent that from happening.41 At the same time, an unquestioned conviction that the only option for Seneca survival is the embrace of “civilization” runs through the Civilization of the Indian Natives. Quaker confidence in their plan, their uncritical assumption of the superiority of their way of life, and their intense anxiety about what was happening to Indians resulted in a chilling speech of Quakers to the Seneca at Tunessasa during Halliday Jackson’s visit in 1820: Brothers, some of our friends have been engaged in instructing you for more than twenty years … we love you, and therefore we feel bound to speak plainly to you. It is the voice of your old and true friends, who have never deceived you. You must endeavor to improve in the habits of civilized life, until you arrive at the state of some of the best of the white people, or you will gradually go back until you lose what you have gained –your friends with mournful hearts will give you up –your lands will go from you –and the very name of the Seneca nation, like many that have gone before you, will only be known in history.42 At the conclusion of the Civilization of the Indian Natives, Jackson wrote, “the constant pressure upon [the Seneca] to obtain their lands, affords strong ground to fear, that their former sales were only a prelude to their parting with the remainder, at no very distant future.”43 The hope he held out was not the certainty that the Seneca could maintain their lands, but rather that if they did lose their lands and move away, then at least they would take with them their knowledge of agriculture that would “contribute to their happiness and comfort, in the land in which they may settle.”44 Jackson identified the “interruption of whites” constantly seeking more land from the Seneca as the greatest impediment to their progress to becoming “useful citizens of the community, 40 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 77. 41 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, e.g., 59, 68, 78, 90. 42 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 75. 43 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 90. 44 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 90.

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contributing to the wealth, the happiness, and national character of the United States.”45 Jackson ended the Civilization of the Indian Natives by echoing the speech of the Seneca Chiefs in Philadelphia in 1790 and charging his readers to stand on the side of justice in allying with Indians: Why should not the policy of the government be directed to the protection and preservation of these people, and not to their extermination from their native soil? Is it not a doctrine sanctioned by the general consent of christians, that all nations are equally free? That one nation has no right to infringe upon the freedom of another? Let us then fulfill the golden rule – let us then, my fellow citizens, exercise that kind of policy towards them, that we would they should have done to us, if they had landed on our shores with a superiority of strength. Why should not things be equal on both sides? Or is the balance of power always to decide the balance of justice, and rob the weak and defenseless of their lawful rights – shall a nation professing christianity, and having pledged itself in the most solemn manner to protect the Indians in all their rights, be guilty of such injustice?46 5

The Second Generation: John Jackson and Rachel Jackson

Halliday’s son John and daughter-in-law Rachel, who also lived in Darby, Pennsylvania, and were members of Darby meeting, continued Halliday’s attention to the Seneca communities in Allegany and Cattaraugus. Throughout their lives John and Rachel challenged dominant American religious, political, and educational practices by championing a myriad of interrelated reforms, including abolition, women’s rights, Indian rights, and peace advocacy. They worked to bring to reality a society predicated on the equality of all persons. For the Jacksons, education was a key means to the transformation of society. In 1837, two years after their marriage and the year Halliday died,47 John and Rachel opened the Sharon Female Seminary, also called Sharon Boarding 45 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 112. (“For truly it must be acknowledged, there are among these native sons of the forest, men of deep reflection – men of extraordinary talents – men of superior powers of mind, and men who … might rank with the ancient orators of Greece and Rome” [Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 112].) 46 Jackson, Civilization of the Indian Natives, 112–113. 47 John wrote of his grief upon his father’s death, “I have known the heavens and the earth to be shaken” (John Jackson to George Truman, 2 mo 10 1835, John Jackson Correspondence, SC 204, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College).

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School, a boarding school for girls that eventually enrolled more than one hundred students, reflecting both Rachel and John’s lifelong dedication to women’s rights.48 The Jacksons’ educational vision was grounded in their religious worldview, in which Christianity was understood as a practical rather than a doctrinal religion: “a series of instructions relating to [hu]man’s duty and happiness, which are to be obeyed and carried out in practice.” For the Jacksons, religion, by its very nature, with its foundational affirmation that God is love, challenged the status quo. They called for people to put the divine instruction to “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” at the center of their lives and practice.49 For Rachel and John Jackson, the most effective social transformation began with personal transformation. Educating young women was a part of a vision of an America dedicated to the wellbeing and equality of all.50 The school was in the vanguard of scientific education for girls. For the Jacksons, religious belief motivated scientific study and, in turn, scientific study deepened faith.51 Scientific education was at the center of the Sharon curriculum, and subjects taught included Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and Astronomy. The school had an extensive geological and mineralogical collection of more than 3,000 specimens of fossils and minerals, along with a compound microscope, maps, globes, and an extensive library. The school’s observatory housed the second largest telescope in mid-nineteenth century America. ­Advertisements for the school invited interested students to learn

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The three-story, stone building was situated on about 100 acres of land about a mile from Darby and its, by then, Hicksite meetinghouse, and seven miles from Philadelphia. The Sharon Female Seminary 1852 “Catalogue of Pupils” lists one student named Deewau-dau-a-gek-heh from the Buffalo Reservation, New York. I have not yet been able to find out anything more about her (Sharon Female Seminary: Circular of the School, and a Description of Apparatus and Astronomical Instruments with a Catalogue of Pupils [Philadelphia: T. Ellwood Chapman, 1852], 24). “If war or hatred of enemies is not a positive violation of a Christian command—I know not what is” (John Jackson, Reflections on Peace and War, 2nd ed. [Philadelphia: T. Elwood Chapman, 1846], 15). Rachel Jackson compared a woman “dependent on the energies of brothers, fathers and husbands” to a dependent vine trained to a frame, and she contrasted this with “the plant, which is strong and vigorous in its native situation” (Address to the Pupils of Sharon Boarding School by the Female Principal [Philadelphia: T.E. Chapman, 1849], 4). A.A. Townsend, Brief Memoir of John Jackson (Philadelphia: Merrihew & Thompson, 1856), 50. John Jackson was a member of the Delaware County Institute of Science and a well-respected astronomer. (This view was shared with the Bartrams. Also note that John Bartram [1699–1777] and his family were members of Darby Meeting. John Bartram had been disowned for theological reasons, but continued attending meeting and some of his children and grandchildren continued as members of Darby Meeting.)

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about Astronomy: “an opportunity is thus given, to become acquainted with its practical operations which is seldom offered to females.” Astronomical data gathered at the school was contributed to the Smithsonian Institution and the Coast Survey. John Jackson located God’s creation as the source of human equality: “From one blood [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth” (Acts 17:26). Jackson maintained, as did many Quakers including Halliday Jackson, Anthony Benezet and Joshua Evans, that humanity was one family, a “brotherhood” of one blood, under the loving care of the “father” God. The family metaphor provided the foundation for the unshakeable assertion of the equality of all persons. In the 1846 second edition of his Reflections on Peace and War, John Jackson set out his arguments against war, and addressed head-on the pro-war arguments of leaders of his day. Starting from the perspective of the familial connection of all people, Jackson asserted that “christianity positively forbids war under any circumstances” and maintained that all wars and acts of carnage are alike in their violation of a fundamental unity of persons.52 In his writings, John Jackson expressed alarm at America’s state, and in particular, he singled out the violence directed at Indian communities: “Our country … maintains a warlike posture … it is expending millions of dollars, and wasting human blood in protracting a war of extermination against an unhappy remnant of our aboriginal race, –and I fear it is the determination of this Government to continue this war until no red man of this remnant shall be left to tell of the wrongs done them by the white man.”53 Although they did not reside with the Seneca for any period of time, John and Rachel carried on Halliday’s work of advocating for the Seneca. Both served as members of the Indian Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and of the Joint Committee of the Four Yearly Meetings of Friends on Indian Concerns of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Genesee. The Jacksons traveled to Washington to advocate for Indians, signed petitions, and worked to prevent, and then to overturn, the much-contested Treaty of 1838. This document did not have widespread support among the Seneca, and was not signed by most of the Seneca Chiefs, but was, nevertheless, voted on by the Senate and passed into law by President Martin Van Buren in April of 1840.54 52 Jackson, Reflections on Peace and War, 74. 53 Jackson, Considerations on the Impropriety of Friends Participating in the Administration of Political Governments (Philadelphia: J. Richards, 1840), 6. 54 On the Treaty of 1838 and surrounding events, see Laurence M. Hauptman, Conspiracy of Interests: Iroquois Dispossession and the Rise of New York State (New York: Syracuse Univ. Pr., 1999), 184–191; 191–212. See also Memorial and Remonstrance of the Committees

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Halliday Jackson’s fears for the Seneca articulated in 1830 were realized in the Treaty of 1838. The four reservations of Tonawanda, Buffalo, Cattaraugus and Allegany would have been lost to the Seneca, and the displaced Seneca would have migrated west. Eventually, in 1842, the Supplemental Treaty of Buffalo Creek was agreed to, and, although there was still a tremendous loss of land in that the Buffalo Creek and Tonawanda reservations were not returned, the Cattaraugus and Allegany reservations were returned to the Seneca.55 Although the Jacksons advocated for Indigenous communities in many contexts and consistently called attention to the heinous acts being carried out by land speculators and politicians against Indians, throughout the formal documents of the Joint Committee the strategy of “civilization” is uniformly and uncritically proposed and pursued. John Jackson was one of three signatories to the 1842 letter to the Seneca from the Joint Committee that recommended the acceptance of the Supplemental Treaty. The Committee leaned heavily on the Quaker process of “civilization” as the only hope for Senecas to defend themselves “under the circumstances in which you are now placed, surrounded by a white population,” in which “the white men, by their intelligence, are constantly taking advantage of you.” The list of things the Quakers advised Senecas to do in order to preserve themselves in 1842 was almost identical to what they had proposed to the Seneca forty years earlier, and the manner of expressing their conviction echoed the chilling warning of Quakers to the Seneca at Tunessasa in 1820.56 In a “Letter to the Secretary of War from

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­ ppointed by the Yearly Meetings of Friends of Genesee, New York, Philadelphia, and BaltiA more to The President of the United States in Relation to the Indians in the State of New York (New York: Mercein & Post’s Pr., 1840); Proceedings of the Joint Committee Appointed by the Society of Friends Constituting the Yearly Meetings of Genesee, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, For Promoting the Civilization and Improving the Condition, of the Seneca Nation of Indians (Baltimore: William Wooddy, 1847); and Further Proceedings of the Joint Committee Appointed by the Society of Friends: Constituting the Yearly Meetings of Genessee, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore; For Promoting the Civilization and Improving the Condition, of the Seneca Nation of Indians, From the Year 1847 to the Year 1850 (Baltimore: Wm. Wooddy & Son, 1850). Hauptman suggests that the 1842 “Supplemental Treaty of Buffalo Creek,” “should be dubbed, in fact, ‘the New York Whig-Hicksite Friend Compromise of 1842 that affected the Seneca’ … Buffalo, the Holy Grail, was firmly in New York’s hands, confirmed in the legally ratified Supplemental Treaty of 1842 … by 1850 the Seneca world that had existed as a separate Indian reality in 1794 had been clearly incorporated into a New York State reality” (Hauptman, Conspiracy of Interests, 212). Eventually, in 1857, the Tonawanda Seneca were able to buy back seventy-five hundred acres of their land (Hauptman, Conspiracy of Interests, 212). “Brothers! Some of you know that your friends, the Quakers, ever since they had settlements among you, at Allegany and Cattaraugus, now more than forty years, have preached

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the General Council of the Seneca,” even in the face of the strong-arm tactics of their supposed Quaker allies who were urging the Seneca to accept the Supplemental Treaty, the Seneca registered their protest of the Supplemental Treaty: “We have strenuously maintained, and we still believe that the Seneca Nation, as such, never has assented to the sale of our lands, to the Ogden Company, but we think this compromise better for us, than to adopt any other means in our power, for obtaining redress.”57 The Joint Committee sponsored a Quaker mission at Cattaraugus from 1842 until 1849 to promote “civilization.” In 1849 the Committee wrote a letter to the Seneca to let them know that the Committee was planning to “close our joint labors among you,” since the goals had been accomplished and the Quakers deemed that the Seneca would now be able to carry the work forward without Quaker assistance. “It gives us pleasure to be able to acknowledge, that, through the co-operation of many of your wise and reflecting men and women, a great change has been effected … elevating your nation, very conspicuously, in the scale of civilization.”58 The letter “To the Seneca Nation of Indians, residing at Cattaraugus and Alleghany, in the State of New York,” signed first by John Jackson, who was Clerk of the Joint Committee at the time, was signed by twenty-two others, including six women, among them Rachel Jackson. Other signatories include James Mott, husband of Lucretia Mott, Benjamin Ferris, and Long Island Quaker travelling minister Rachel Hicks. Repeating the charge of the 1842 letter, and couched in patronizing language that undercut the Quaker affirmation of the equality of all people, the letter offered “civilization” as the way to stop the process of extermination that was decimating Indian communities and that John Jackson had singled out in his

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to you this doctrine. They labored to persuade your people to become Farmers; and bring up your children to agriculture and to learn trades … You did not take their advice then, and since that time your nation has been growing weaker and weaker… If you will take our advice now – if you will bring up your sons to agriculture and the arts – if you will withdraw your women from the labors and drudgery of the field –if you will have your daughters taught to spin, and to sew, and to knit; as well as to practice the other useful branches of housewifery – if you will set your children an example of sobriety and other virtues, then will your nation grow and increase, and become strong. But if you will not follow this advice, nothing your friends have done, or can do, for you, will save you from extinction . And the day is not very distant when, like the snow under a warm sun, your race will melt away and be seen of men no more” (Proceedings of the Joint Committee, 95–96). Proceedings of the Joint Committee, 100. “To the Seneca Nation of Indians, residing at Cattaraugus and Alleghany, in the State of New York,” Friends Weekly Intelligencer (1844–1853); March 10, 1849; 5, 50; American Periodicals Series Online.

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other writings as a national calamity. Jackson cites “agriculture and its kindred arts” as the way forward, applauding the presence of “well cultivated farms, fruitful orchards, good dwelling houses, fine stock” and abundant grain. The letter recorded that Seneca lands could not be sold unless agreed to by a vote of two-thirds of all the male adult members of the Seneca Nation. In a conclusion that could have been challenged by many of John Jackson’s own writings on politics, the 1849 letter ended with a paean to the State of New York for treating the Seneca Nation “not only with justice, but with parental affection” and offered assurances that “She is still your friend, and we feel assured that you may safely rely on her justice and kindness in every future emergency.” The letter ended with the reiteration of the Joint Committees of the four Yearly Meetings of Genesee, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore of their intentions to close “their Establishment at Cattaraugus,” and with the conclusion that, “you are advancing in the great work of civilization, and [we] bid you farewell with the warmest wishes for your present and future happiness.”59 6 Conclusion Three key themes guided Indian Committee Quakers for fifty years, at least in terms of the official documents, and perhaps contributed to the overriding of some of their other more fundamental principles of the equality of all persons before God: First, was the increasingly unquestioned commitment to the notion of civilization. Though people such as William Bartram and Anthony Benezet had, at least on some occasions, directly challenged whether White people’s notion of “civilization” was an advancement with respect to Indian traditions and practices, over the course of the fifty years from 1800–1850 the concept of “civilization” was increasingly present, oppressive in its hegemony, sweeping up all evidence to the contrary in its path. It may be an example par excellence of how the very categories we use to define our reality may, in becoming monolithic, blind us to aspects of that reality we otherwise might well have the resources to recognize. There was considerable, and, as it turned out, unjustified, confidence in the process of assimilation that the model of “civilization” entailed, a confidence, e.g., that the agriculture and the education being promulgated would be untainted by the other dimensions of the “civilized” world that the Jacksons spent much of their lives critiquing. For example, education at Allegany and Cattaraugus was presumed by the Indian Committees to be untainted by 59

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the damaging cultural values to which the Sharon Boarding School had been founded specifically to provide an alternative. It was just this “domestication” of women’s education promulgated by the “civilization” model that the Jacksons, motivated by religious beliefs, had devoted their lives to overturning. Over the course of fifty years the official Quaker documents offer no critique of the educational model they disseminated in Indian communities. Further, the personal and cultural losses connected with practices of “assimilation,” are unacknowledged in any direct way in the journals, letters, and official documents. A second theme guiding the Indian Committees and embraced by the Jacksons was a commitment to European-based agricultural practices as the answer to what would make Indians “comfortable” (a term used frequently) and ensure survival. Agriculture as it was promulgated by the Quakers included the raising of livestock as well as the growing of new vegetables and grains different from already-established Seneca agricultural practices. In addition to a new model of private property, the Quakers’ agricultural model was calling also for a shift in the Seneca social roles of men and women. Quakers such as Halliday Jackson believed in agriculture as a biblically-grounded way of life: the agricultural landscape was the sacred landscape. Third, the Quaker concept of God and the relationship of God to humans may have led them astray. Quaker respect for the primacy of religious experience led them to pay attention to Indian religion, to recognize the power of the commitment to the Great Spirit in Indian communities, and to acknowledge the innate moral sense possessed by Indians as well as Whites. Still, Quakers increasingly portrayed themselves as in some way like the father God, father of the family; a paternalism characterized their way of thinking and defined much of their work, although their own religious and moral commitments could have led them to know something other. When Seneca Johnson Silverheels said the Great Spirit favored Seneca hospitality practices, Quakers overrode the insight and its implicit claim to Seneca equal access to the will of the Divine. The Quakers’ family metaphor blinded them because in it they identified themselves with the father Creator and not with the sisters and brothers of Creation. They had the tools to avoid the mistake, but they did not. As noted at the outset, this family history offers insight into practices of allyship. The cautionary aspects of this story of two generations of well-­ intentioned Quakers remain with us today. In considering the relationship of the Jackson family with Seneca communities, we can recognize damaging historical patterns of imposing monolithic visions for change and dismissing voices of dissent. We see in this narrative the wisdom of the observation that in movements for social change, we do well to be skeptical when the responsibility for change in placed primarily on the people who are being oppressed

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rather than on the oppressors themselves and on those who collude by silence in the oppression. The religious principles that led Quakers like the Jacksons to work with the Seneca radically challenged the American status quo, in that they embraced a vision of America that would hold all people in equal regard. For two generations the Jackson family witnessed to and protested against the “war of extermination” they saw was being waged against Indian Nations. And yet, in coming together around a strategy to support Indian survival and flourishing, these Quakers pursued a model for change that unquestioningly privileged White ways of life and White claims to divine guidance.

Chapter 8

The Meddlesome Friend: Philip Evan Thomas among the Onöndawa´ga:´ 1838–1861 Laurence M. Hauptman From 1838 to just before the Civil War, Philip Evan Thomas, the president of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the founder and director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and president of the Merchants’ Bank of Baltimore, was the most prominent member of the Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends (Odi´kaes = the women who wear skirts) involved in Onöndawa´ga:´ (People of the Big Hill/ Senecas) political affairs.1 After he lobbied for a federal treaty in 1842 that returned the Allegany and Cattaraugus Indian Reservations to the Senecas, he was adopted as a tribal member. Subsequently, in 1845, the Seneca Nation Council of Chiefs appointed him as their envoy to Washington, and he served in that capacity well into the 1850s.2 He also encouraged and financially supported Presbyterian missionary Asher Wright’s efforts to establish the Thomas Asylum for Orphan and Destitute Indians, later renamed the Thomas Indian School, that was founded in 1855.3 On December 4th and 5th, 1848, seventy-two delegates from the Cattaraugus and Allegany Indian Reservations in Western New York met in a constitutional convention. In their deliberations, often referred to as the “Seneca Revolution,” they overthrew the traditional governing structure, the council of

1 Thomas’ remarkable entrepreneurial abilities are discussed in: James D. Dilts, The Great Road: The Building of the Baltimore and Ohio: The Nation’s First Railroad, 1828–1953 (Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press, 1993), 10–12, 32–50, 56, 62; John F. Stover, History of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1987), 20–25, 30–33, 37. 2 For the Senecas’ adoption of Thomas, see “Council of the Seneca Nation at Cattaraugus,”[New York] Commercial Advertiser, August 18, 1845; Report of the Proceedings of an Indian Council Held at Cattaraugus in the State of New York, 7th Month, 1845 (Baltimore; William Woody, 1845), 33–34; Philip Thomas to George Manypenny [Commissioner of Indian Affairs], June 7, 1853, Office of Indian Affairs, Microfilm Series 234, New York Agency Records, Microfilm Reel 588, Record Group 75, National Archives [hereafter oia, M, nyar,MR, RG, NA]. 3 William N. Fenton, “Toward the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Natives: The Missionary and Linguistic Work of Asher Wright (1803–1875) Among the Seneca of Western New York,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 100 (December 1956): 567–581.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_009

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chiefs, and replaced it with an elected system, the Seneca Nation of Indians.4 Their actions furthered a separation from the Tonawanda Senecas who to this day maintain their council of chiefs. It also led to the official exclusion of the Seneca Nation from being represented on the Iroquois Confederacy’s Grand Council at Onondaga.5 Then and now, many Hodinöhsö:ni´(Iroquois/People of the Extended Lodge or Longhouse) blame outsiders for the overthrow of the Seneca chiefs. Thomas was one of those outsiders accused of causing the revolution.6 Although he and his Hicksite Friends colleagues were especially active in Seneca affairs, their importance has been exaggerated. Their role has been skewered by scholar’s overdependence on the overwhelming amount of correspondence and published pamphlets that the Quakers left behind.7 Indeed, the Senecas 4 Thomas S. Abler, “Friends, Factions, and the Seneca Nation Revolution of 1848,” Niagara Frontier 21 (1974): 74–79. Abler treats it in great detail in: “Factional Dispute and Party Conflict in the Political System of the Seneca Nation (1845–1895): An Ethnohistorical Analysis.” (Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Toronto: University of Toronto, 1969). For the Seneca resolutions at this convention and Constitution of 1848, see David E. Wilkins, Ed., Documents of Native American Political Development, 1500s–1933 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 75–81. 5 I have treated the impact previously: Laurence M. Hauptman, Conspiracy of Interests: Iroquois Dispossession and the Rise of New York State (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 191–212. The separation of the Tonawandas from the Allegany and Cattaraugus Senecas started earlier but was officially completed between 1848 and their federal treaty of 1857. Hauptman, The Tonawanda Senecas’ Heroic Battle Against Removal ( Albany: suny Press, 2011), 7–12,24–29, 45–59, 110. Today, the Tonawanda Senecas are the only Seneca sachems represented on the Grand Council and speak for all Senecas in deliberations at Onondaga. 6 On February 21, 1849, Chief Maris Pierce wrote to Joseph Elkinton, an Orthodox Friend and long-time teacher among the Senecas, stating he could not believe that the Quakers would do such a thing as breaking their bond and supporting the revolutionaries of 1848. Pierce, Maris Pierce mss., Buffalo History Museum Library [hereafter bhml]. Pierce later personally accused Thomas of fomenting the revolution. Pierce to Elkinton, June 10, 1850, Haverford College, copy in Seneca Nation Archives. Many Senecas that I have met and interviewed over the last fifty years nostalgically look back at the time before 1848, which they assume was agolden era when the chiefs ruled. They blame outside white meddlers for the overthrow of the chiefs council and the Seneca Nation’s expulsion from the Iroquois Confederacy. Laurence M. Hauptman, Seneca Nation Field Notes, 1971 to 2017. 7 The Case of the Seneca Indians in the State of New York; and in a series of pamphlets: Society of Friends (Hicksites). Executive Committee of the Yearly Meetings. Proceedings of an Indian Council Held at the Buffalo Creek Reservation, State of New York, Fourth Month, 1842 (Baltimore: William Wooddy, 1842). 18,21,25–26. Society of Friends (Hicksite), Executive Committee, Proceedings of an Indian Council Held at Cattaraugus in the State of New York, 1843 (Baltimore: William Wooddy, 1843), 12–13; “Document F: Address From the Committee of Yearly Meeting of Friends at Baltimore in Congress.” In: Declaration of the Seneca Nation of Indians in General Council Assembled with the Accompanying Document; also An Address to the Chiefs and People of that Nation (Baltimore: William Wooddy, 1845), 38–42; Report of the Proceedings of an Indian Council Held at Cattaraugus in the State of New York, 7th Month, 1845 (Baltimore; William

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t­hemselves, both men and women, not outsiders such as Thomas and the Hicksites, were the major actors in the events that led to the revolution in 1848. In undertaking nearly fifty years of fieldwork among the Senecas, I have come to the conclusion that scholars too often treat these Native peoples as merely victims and not as actors in their own history. At times, these Native Americans have had the ability to use outsiders, including Thomas, for their own purposes. In his classic Apologies to the Iroquois, Edmund Wilson perceptively observed: “One finds thus at the core of the Seneca people an intelligence and a practical ability a kind of irreducible morale, which, in the course of their difficult relations with the whites, has always in the long run retrieved them from disasters inflicted upon them and the results of their own vices.”8 As a Baltimore Friend, Thomas had a longstanding involvement in dealing with non-white communities in crisis. From the late eighteenth century onward, the Quakers in the city were active in the anti-slavery movement. As early as 1802, its Baltimore Indian Committee directed its attention to the Wyandots of Ohio and problems caused by frontier traders of rum. In the city, the majority of members of the Society of Friends were Hicksites, having separated from the Orthodox branch in 1828, a year later than when the schism occurred in Philadelphia.9 “The [Hicksite] Separation,” as it is known in history, had ramifications not only on the Society of Friends, but on the Quaker interaction with the Onöndawa´ga:´. Both of these two Friends branches were present among the Senecas at Allegany and at Cattaraugus between 1838 and 1861 and disagreements arose within the Society of Friends over what was the extent and direction of their involvement there. In these years, Thomas and his Hicksite Woody, 1845), 5–13, 15–26; Joint Committee on Indian Affairs. Report of the Proceedings at an Indian Council Held at Cattaraugus in the State of New York, June, 1846 (Baltimore: William Wooddy, 1846), 14, 16, 24; Documents and Official Reports Illustrating the Causes Which Led to the Revolution of the Seneca Indians in the Year 1848, and to the Recognition of their Representative Republican Constitution By the Authorities of the United States and of the State of New York (Baltimore: William Wooddy and Son, 1857); Philip Thomas, An Address to Edward Purse [Pierce]. President of the Seneca Nation (Baltimore: William Wooddy, 1858), 1–4. 8 Edmund Wilson, Apologies to the Iroquois ( New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1960; paperback reprint, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 172. 9 Gary L. Browne, Baltimore in the New Nation, 1789–1861 Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 56, 100, 268n18; Sherry H. Olson, Baltimore: The Building of an American City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 62, 73; Terry D. Bilhartz, Urban Religion and the Second Great Awakening; Church and Society in Early Baltimore (East Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986), 130–131; Christopher Phillips, Freedom’s Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790–1860 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 228–229.

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colleagues meddled much more directly in Seneca politics than the Orthodox branch represented by the missionary-teacher Joseph Elkinton.10 The Hicksites’ intention was to lead the Senecas into becoming tax-paying New Yorkers, American citizens who would value private property and eventually accept living on individual homesteads on allotted lands, not reservations. In the federal Treaty with the Six Nations at Buffalo Creek on January 15, 1838, one consummated as a result of bribery, forgery, the use of alcohol, and other nefarious methods, the Senecas ‘ceded’ all their remaining residential lands in New York to the Ogden Land Company and relinquished their rights to Menominee lands in Wisconsin purchased for them by the United States. In return, the Indians ‘accepted’ a 1,824,000-acre Kansas reservation set aside by the federal government for all the six Iroquois nations as well as the Stockbridge-Munsees.11 Led by Thomas, the Hicksites were quite active in lobbying against forcing the removal of the Senecas to Kansas, then part of the Indian Territory. They strongly lobbied for a new treaty, one that eventually came about on May 20, 1842. This treaty allowed for the return to the Senecas of the Allegany and Cattaraugus Indian Reservations, but not the Buffalo Creek and Tonawanda Indian Reservations.12 Yet Thomas and the Hicksites were hardly alone in p ­ ushing 10

For example, some Friends criticized the federal-Seneca Treaty of 1842 and did not support the Seneca revolution of 1848, both supported by Thomas. Moreover, the Friends Committee on Indian Concerns did not support the federal change in the distribution of treaty annuity payments that was promoted by Thomas. Mary Conable, “A Steady Enemy: The Ogden Land Company and the Seneca Indians.” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Rochester: University of Rochester, 1995), 252–253; Abler, “Factional Dispute and Party Conflict…,” 111. At times, the Orthodox Friends themselves contributed to internal schisms within the Onöndawa´ga:´. Mark A. Nicholas, “A Little School, A Reservation Divided: Quaker Education and Allegany Seneca Leadership in the Early American Republic,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 30 (2006): 1–21. For more on Elkinton and the Orthodox Friends, see Jill Kinney, “Letters, pen, and tilling the field”: Quaker Schools Among the Seneca Indians on the Allegany River, 1798–1852.” (Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Rochester, New York: University of Rochester, 2009). 11 7 Stat. 550 (January 15, 1838). For the frauds, see Society of Friends, The Case of the Seneca Indians in the State of New York (1840; reprint, Stamfordville, New York: Earl Coleman, 1979); Henry Manley, “Buying Buffalo from the Indians,” New York History 28 (July 1947): 313–325. 12 For the United States-Seneca Treaty of 1842, see 7 Stat.586 (May 20, 1842). The Tonawanda Senecas had to buy back 7500 acres of their reservation after a new federal treaty was ratified in 1857. See 11 Stat., 729 (September 24, 1857). For how the Tonawanda secured some of their lands back, see Laurence M. Hauptman, The Tonawanda Senecas’ Heroic Battle Against Removal…, 87–122. For example, today members of the Seneca Nation of Indians refer to the United States-Seneca Treaty of 1842, an accord that returned the Allegany and Cattaraugus reservations but not the Buffalo Creek and Tonawanda Reservations, as the

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for this new treaty, even though their numerous publications suggested otherwise.13 However, as I have suggested in my previous writings, putting the Thomas and the Hicksites at the center of overturning of the 1838 treaty leaves out the important changes happening in federal and state Indian policies in the early 1840s and minimizes Senecas’ own abilities to influence events. Whig Party leaders such as John Spencer and his father Ambrose, the grand old man of the party, were just as much if not more responsible for the return of two of the four reservations.14 Thomas was used by both by federal and state officials as well as by some Hodinöhsö:ni´ [Six Nations people] themselves to advance their own separate agendas. This was most evident in the movement to install a new tribally-­ elected government structure in 1848. As a most accomplished businessman and philanthropist, who better was there to represent the powerless Senecas as an envoy on Capitol Hill? Although known for his philanthropic contributions to the poor, his support of the temperance movement, and his funding of the main library and fire company in Baltimore, Thomas, “could be calculating and devious.”15 Thomas’ Seneca naming ceremony in 1848 reveals much about the Onöndawa´ga:´ and how they viewed Thomas. After he was officially made Seneca envoy to Washington for the second time in December, 1848, the Senecas bestowed him with a new name - “Hai-wa-noh’” (meaning “impressive voice, one who is listened to”).16 After all, by the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, most Senecas were not naïve about how class and power realities operated in American politics after experiencing the loss of millions of acres at the hands of the sharks such as the Holland and Ogden Land Companies in collusion with state and federal officials. Senecas were/are a highly pragmatic people. They were not automatons merely taking their marching orders from Thomas. Although the Hicksites “Compromise Treaty.” However members of the Tonawanda Band of Senecas, refer to the same accord as the “Compromised Treaty.” 13 See Note 7. 14 I have treated the Whigs and the 1842 treaty extensively before. See Laurence M. Hauptman,” “State’s Men, Salvation Seekers, and the Senecas: The Supplemental Treaty of Buffalo Creek, 1842,” New York History 78 (January,1997): 51–82; Others have credited the ­Senecas with being skillful politicians in this same period of Thomas’ involvement: Claudia B. Haake,“Iroquois Use of Customary Haudenosaunee and United States Law in Opposing Removal,” American Indians Culture and Research Journal 20 (2012): 29–56; Conable, “A Steady Enemy…,.” 440–441. 15 Dilts, The Great Road, 36. 16 Documents and Official Reports Illustrating the Causes Which Led to the Revolution…, 4. See also Note 2.

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favored the new constitution established in 1848, one that on its surface replicates the three-branch, American structure of governance, Onöndawa´ga:´ political behavior was/is not merely a carbon copy of what is found in Washington.17 Over a half century ago, prominent anthropologist William N. Fenton rightly pointed out that the Senecas are skillful at adapting, a major factor in their ability to survive as a distinct people while faced with numerous challenges and crises in their history. In June 1965, Fenton, then director of the New York State Museum, wrote Walter Taylor about the Senecas. Fenton pointed the following out to Taylor, the well respected American Friends Service community organizer who had helped the Senecas in the Kinzua Dam crisis: “If anthropologists have discovered anything important about the Iroquois or Iroquoian culture, it is significant that it has refused to go away. In each generation and in each century, it has managed to adapt itself to the contemporary stream of events so that it has managed to survive.”18 Even before the Hicksites came to the aid of the Senecas’ after the 1838 treaty, many Senecas themselves had come to the conclusion that their world had to change in order to survive. Although Thomas favored changes that restricted the chiefs’ powers and chose sides against the chiefs’ council, many Senecas, including some of the chiefs themselves, saw the need for the restructuring of the Seneca government. While the Hicksites favored the move and encouraged it in numerous ways, internal factors within Seneca society originating as far back as the 1780s and 1790s were the primary factors causing the Seneca revolution in 1848. After all, from 1797 onward, the Senecas were dispossessed of millions of acres that today make up the fourteen most westerly counties of New York State! In 1790, only about 1000 non-Indians were living west of Seneca Lake, namely in the historic Seneca territory. With the rapid success of the Erie Canal and its terminus at Buffalo on the Great Lakes, the non-Indian population of Erie County alone expanded from 6201 in 1814 to 62,465 by 1840.19 17

18 19

For Seneca political skills, see Laurence M. Hauptman, In The Shadow of Kinzua: The Seneca Nation of Indians Since World War ii (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014), xxiixxiii, 3–10, 267–274. My forty-five years of fieldwork, influenced by Anthony F.C. Wallace and William N. Fenton, have not only provided me with insights about the physical landscape of Seneca Country, but has resulted in a clearer understanding of Seneca politics. See Laurence M. Hauptman, “Beyond Forensic History: Observations Based on a FortyYear Journey Through Iroquois Country,” Journal of the West 49 (Fall 2010): 11–19. William N. Fenton to Walter Taylor, January 28, 1965, Walter Taylor mss. Microfilm Reel 14, Walter Taylor mss., Wisconsin Historical Society. u.s. Bureau of the Census, Eighth Census of the United States: Mortality and Miscellaneous Statistics (1840). For the rise of Buffalo, see David Gerber, The Making of American Pluralism: Buffalo, New York, 1825–1860 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 21–71.

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Thus, what caused the revolution of 1848 was not the actions of meddling Hicksites, but largely the politics of blame, namely Senecas, women as well as men, accusing the chiefs of being incompetent and corrupt, that led to the loss of millions of acres of Onöndawa´ga::´ lands in questionable state and federal treaties. The chiefs were also accused of favoritism and corruption in the distribution of treaty annuities and not acting in a way that they were required to act as was set forth in the Gayaneshä´go:wa:h [Hodinöhsö:ni´ Great Law of Peace]. To be fair to the chiefs who were overthrown in 1848, not all were incompetent and/or corrupt, but were too often powerless to resist other chiefs and forces set in motion by a rising American empire. They were increasingly split in part because they were a diverse body representing local reservation ­interests. Their enemies, nevertheless, painted them with a wide brush, ­accusing all of them with favoring emigration to the West, land sales, and cooperating with the likes of the nefarious sub-agent James Stryker in securing a treaty of ­removal at Buffalo Creek in 1838. Even when some of the chiefs expressed the need for reform, they could not extricate themselves from the web of shame surrounding this hated treaty that many of their chiefs signed. Some of the opponents of the chiefs’ council in the 1840s also had baggage and consequently not all should be seen merely as noble reformers. Despite the revolution the ex-chiefs themselves were back in political power within three years in the elective system created in 1848. They, as their opponents who intermittently returned to power, were hard-boiled Seneca politicians who skillfully used an approach that characterizes tribal elections right down to the present time. After a political crisis in 1864–1865, the majority of members of both sides, in a typical Seneca pragmatic way, came to an understanding to fight future battles largely through the electoral process. The beginnings of the revolution could easily be dated to 1845. In January of that year, fifty of the Seneca chiefs met in council at Cattaraugus. At the meeting, Chief John Seneca, later president of the Seneca Nation in 1857 under its elected system, described the urgency that brought the chiefs together. At the council, the chiefs assembled began to discuss what strategies they needed to use to redeem themselves in the eyes of their communities since some realized that their days as chiefs were numbered unless they agreed to some reforms. Most in attendance apparently did not realize that what they would decide on would have far-ranging consequences and would lead to the undoing of their leadership in 1848. Yet, it was already too late to turn back the clock. Moreover, some of their actions in council actually were to exacerbate their standing within their communities.

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The first problem the chiefs had to deal with was to try to distance themselves from the popularly held view that they were not protective enough of the Seneca estate. Despite the federal government’s return of Allegany and Cattaraugus in 1842, the residents of these two communities had little confidence in the abilities of the chiefs to save these lands in the future. After all, federal and state officials constantly ignored treaty guarantees from 1794 onward and the Holland and Ogden Land Companies continued to make “payments” to some of the chiefs. The misdeeds of 1838 loomed large in the minds of all Senecas. Washington’s promises of protection were seen as worthless, since its ‘commitments’ changed with the wind upon each new administration entering office. If some of the chiefs could be tricked and/or be corrupted to sell all of their residential territories, including Buffalo, the largest Seneca reservation and the ritual center of the Iroquois Confederacy after the American Revolution, would Allegany and Cattaraugus be next? Chief Seneca was remarkably honest in his admission of the past failures of the chiefs. He insisted that a new generation of more educated Senecas had come to realize “that the ancient form” of government was not adapted to the necessities of the nation in its present improved form …“[and] the danger of placing power in the hands of irresponsible, venal men, who had been, and again might be seduced, and without their knowledge or consent, co-operate with, and assist an association of heartless speculators, in taking from them their homes, and driving them into some distant wilderness to perish.” In order to save the nation from spies within and “unslumbering” and “rapacious enemies” without, the chief urged reforming the Senecas’ political institutions and divesting the chiefs “of the arbitrary and irresponsible power they had assumed.”20 In a disclaimer undoubtedly inserted to win some tribal council support, the resolution of January 30th, 1845, stated that “nothing herein contained shall, in any manner, alter change, or effect lessen or diminish the rights, powers, duties, privileges or authority of the Chiefs in any matter or respect whatever…”21 At this January council, the chiefs, however, had forgotten their obligations to the clan matrons, an omission not caused by Thomas. The wording of the council resolution of 1845 left out references to the roles of clan mothers, the “keepers of the kettle” who traditionally were viewed as the protectors of 20

21

Documents and Official Reports Illustrating the Causes Which Led to the Revolution…, 15–20. For more on John Seneca, see Henry R. Howland, “The Seneca Mission at Buffalo Creek.” In: Buffalo Historical Publications, Frank Severance, Ed,. Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society, 1903), 6: 156–157, 379–380. Documents and Official Reports Illustrating the Causes Which Led to the Revolution…, 16–18.

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the land. The Great Law mandated that clan mothers had the exclusive power to determine assignments of fields and had to be consulted on issues related to the alienation of lands, but things had dramatically changed by the 1840s. This major omission was a factor in the events leading up to revolution in December, 1848. It was no accident that the revolutionaries, undoubtedly trying to win women’s support, wrote into the Seneca Constitution of 1848 the requirement that 3/4 of the “mothers of the nation” had to approve future land sales before the Seneca Nation could legally alienate their lands. However, women’s status within Seneca society had been changing long before the Quakers arrived. Extended families residing in longhouse residences owned by matrons had been significantly modified as early as the mid eighteenth century. By the 1790s, Senecas were living in cabins in nuclear family arrangements. Although under the Great Law, clan mothers, the “keepers of the kettle” had to be consulted on all land issues and assignments as they were at Canandaigua in 1794 and at Big Tree in 1797, their influence was clearly muted at later councils.22 Perhaps partly motivated by being bypassed by the chiefs in 1845 and quite aware that they had not been consulted on land matters since 1797, some women later in 1848 and 1849 sent petitions advocating a change away from chiefly rule to an elected system of government. Moreover, the women favored a change in the distribution of annuities from the chiefs directly to Senecas including to the women, and urged that these annuities be parceled out in one payment to heads of a household in the Spring rather than at two separate times of year as was the rule. They pointed out these changes would help

22

Ibid., 19–20. For the role of women as set forth in the Great Law, see William N. Fenton, The Great Law and Longhouse (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 215–223. There are several versions of the Great Law. For a discussion of these versions, see. Fenton, “Introduction.” In: Parker on the Iroquois, William N. Fenton, Ed. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1968), 38–47. For the modification of longhouse residences by the 1750s, see Kurt Jordan, The Seneca Restoration: A Local Political Economy (Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 2008). By the time the Quakers arrived, Senecas were living in log cabins. Dorcas B. Brown, “Reservation Log Houses.” (m.a. thesis, Cooperstown, New York: suny Oneonta/Cooperstown New York State Historical Association, 2000), 29–32. The literature on Hodinöhsö:ni´ women is vast. For a sampling, see Nancy Shoemaker, “The Rise or Fall of Iroquoian Women,” Journal of Women’s History, 29 (1991): 39–57; and her “From Longhouse to Log House: Household Composition Among the Nineteenth Century Senecas,” American Indian Quarterly, 15 (1991): 329–338. Diane Rothenberg, “The Mothers of the Nation: Seneca Resistance to Quaker Intervention.” In: Women and Colonization, Eds. Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock. (New York: J.F. Bergin Publishers, 1980), 63–87; Joy Bilharz, “First Among Equals? The Changing Status of Seneca Women.” In: Women and Power in Native North America, Laura Klein and Lillian Ackerman, Eds. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 101–112.

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S­ eneca families finance the expense of planting crops.23 Federal and state treaty annuities had traditionally had been distributed to the chiefs who had the prerogative to parcel out the moneys in any way they saw fit. Although state legislators attempted to reduce this power held by the chiefs in a law in 1845, they reversed this decision in 1847, and voted instead to allow the council of chiefs to appoint a committee to receive and distribute the state-Indian treaty annuities. However, in 1847, the United States Congress passed legislation allowing its Indian agents the right to distribute federal treaty annuities per capita. Moreover, Seneca women were not alone in distrusting the chiefs’ fairness in the distribution of treaty annuities. Although Thomas and the Hicksites supported per capita distribution of treaty annuities, so did most the Senecas and not just the women.24 On May 8th 1845, the New York State Legislature, supported by Thomas and the Hicksites, passed “An Act for the Protection and Improvement of the Seneca Indians Residing in the Cattaraugus Reservations in this State.” The act’s title and some of its text suggests that at least some of the legislators were not merely motivated by pure benevolence. On the surface, much like the Whig and the Hicksite agendas, the state legislators by their actions were attempting to replace Washington’s historic role as “Great Father” to the Indians with Albany. In it, the legislators gave promises of protection against trespassers and whiskey sellers. The act, nevertheless, intruded on Seneca sovereignty and on the powers of the existing chiefs’ council. Albany recognized the existence of the “Seneca Nation of Indians” as the government on the Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Oil Spring Reservations and awarded it the right to “prosecute and maintain in all courts of law and equity in this state, any action, suit or proceeding which may be necessary or proper to protect the rights and interests of said Indians and of the said nation, in and to the said reservations….” The act also ‘allowed’ actions for damages suffered by the Indians “in common, or as a nation” in state courts. To satisfy the Friends, Longhouse followers of the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake [Sga:nyodai:yoh], and other prohibitionists, the act made it a crime punishable by law to sell or give any Seneca “spirituous liquor or any intoxicating drink.”25 Importantly, the act of 1845 established annual Seneca elections each May for the positions of tribal clerk, treasurer, two marshals and Peacemaker j­ udges/ 23 24 25

Seneca Women’s Petition, October 13, 1848, oia, M234, nyar, MR587, RG75, NA. Gua-naea To President Zachary Taylor, April 24, 1849. In: Documents and Official Reports Illustrating the Causes Which Led to the Revolution…, 23–24. Abler, “Factional Dispute and Party Conflict…,” 111. Laws of New York, Chap. 150 (May 8.1845), 146.

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mediators. One provision even allowed the New York’s governor to nominate, with the consent of the state senate, a person “who shall have been a counselor in the supreme court of this state for three years or more, to be an attorney of the Seneca Nation of Indians.” This person “shall from time to time advise the said Indians respecting controversies between themselves, and between them or any of them, and any other person.” Other sections of the legislation ‘granted’ the Seneca peacemaker justices or a majority of them the right to call meetings of the chiefs. The new state legislation also outlined Seneca voting qualifications and terms of office; described the specific duties and legal responsibilities of the Peacemaker courts, Treasurer, and Clerk of the Seneca Nation; allowed for legal appeal to a jury of six chiefs; made it a state crime to offer false testimony in a tribal court; gave the chiefs the final say in assigning lands for cultivation; and provided individual Indians the right to sell timber on lands assigned to him, but limited his rights elsewhere and set penalties.26 Thomas supported this law. He later emphasized that the Senecas should use New York State Law to their advantage in an effort to protect their lands or else they might become “wanderers in a far distant wilderness, without no other prospect before them but famine and cruel death.” He added that because it provided the Senecas with a “regular government, under the protection of the Great State in which you live,” that it was calculated to protect the Senecas from fraud and preserve them from destruction. He insisted that the Hicksites feared that if they rejected it, they would be walking again “into the same snares of your deadliest foes?”27 In the Summer of 1845, at the last council ever held on the Buffalo Creek Reservation, the Senecas adopted Thomas for his help in securing two reservations back in 1842 [although his name “Saquoan”, and clan affiliation appear inaccurate in the reporting of the council]. Some Senecas believed they still needed him as an intermediary, while others feared his significant influence with prominent Whigs. Perhaps realizing the increased criticism of the chiefs by powerful Seneca women, Thomas asked the council for its recognition of the need to provide greater educational opportunities for women, although his ideas were largely limited to stereotypical household roles.28

26 27 28

Ibid. Philip Thomas to Seneca Chiefs, November 19,1846, Maris B. Pierce mss, bhml; Report of the Proceedings at an Indian Council Held at Cattaraugus in the State of New York, June, 1846, 24. Report of the Proceedings of an Indian Council Held at Cattaraugus in the State of New York, 7th Month, 1845, 12–25, 33–34; “Council of the Seneca Nation at Cattaraugus,”[New York] Commercial Advertiser, August 18, 1845.

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In 1846, the Onondawa´ga::´ held elections for the first time after twenty-five chiefs assembled in council agreed to abide by the New York State Legislative act of May 8th. By then, the Seneca chiefs could not justify their questionable actions. The ancient custom of consensus politics had long disappeared and now the politics of blame was tearing the chiefs’ council apart. Chief Maris Pierce, a graduate of Dartmouth College, viewed the legislation as intrusive, one that struck a “blow” to “our old customs and usages.” Others such as Chief John Kennedy and Chief Nathaniel T. Strong, who had attended Yale University and who had cooperated with discredited pro-removal federal Indian agent James Stryker, decided to participate.29 Subsequently, Kennedy was elected Clerk and the highly controversial Chief Strong as Peacemaker.30 In order to stem criticism for their support of the state act, the Hicksites once again held a meeting at Cattaraugus in June 1846. The meeting was attended by 25 Senecas, including Chiefs Blacksnake, Israel Jemison, John Kennedy, and Henry Two Guns. Importantly, about half of the attendees were women. The Hicksites insisted that their support of the 1845 act was only intended to help the Indians out of dangers and that they were attempting to bring them relief. Not seeing the act as a threat to tribal sovereignty, these Hicksites claimed the act was passed out of benevolence by state legislators in Albany. Two Senecas in attendance, John Cook and Young Chief, endorsed Hicksite efforts. Cook, later one of the revolutionaries of 1848, pointed out that the Quakers had always been our constant unswerving friends.”31 Perhaps to win the women’s support for their legislative and educational efforts and apparently aware of the important customary role of the women in Seneca society, Thomas announced plans for the establishment of a “Female Manual Training School at Cattaraugus.”32 On August 28, 1846, Thomas wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs suggesting that the 1845 New York State law establishing elections and not recognizing the special rights of the chiefs was the first step in bringing a semblance of order to the Seneca Nation. In this and other later correspondence, Thomas also discounted petitions of the chiefs who were protesting the proposed change in distributing annuity payments. He disparaged some of the chiefs and used his Washington connections to have Chief Maris Pierce 29

Maris Pierce to George T. Trimble, March 16, 1846, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends mss., Haverford College, [copy on file at Seneca Nation Archives] Colin Calloway, The Indian History of an American Institution: Native Americans and Dartmouth (Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College, 2010), 92–94, 103, 196–199. 30 “Electoral results of Seneca election, 1846,” oia, M234, nyar, MR 586, RG75, NA. 31 Joint Committee on Indian Affairs. Report of the Proceedings at an Indian Council Held at Cattaraugus in the State of New York, June, 1846 (Baltimore: William Wooddy, 1846). 32 Ibid, 24.

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removed as the United States interpreter, replacing him with his personal candidate, Dr. Peter Wilson, a controversial Cayuga chief and a graduate of Geneva Medical College.33 Wilson was the grandson of the Seneca Chief Farmers Brother, a hero of the War of 1812. With the presence of hundreds of Cayugas and Onondagas at Cattaraugus territory, refugees from Buffalo Creek, and without land rights on Seneca lands, the controversial Wilson became their spokesman.34 Wilson stoked popular fears by suggesting that the Ogden Land Company would return to plague the Indians and that the council of chiefs would once again be corrupted and would repeat the disaster of 1838.35 The Cayuga physician kept Thomas informed about what was happening within the Seneca communities.36 Later after the revolution of 1848 came about, Wilson [along with Philip Thomas and Asher Wright], were accused of plotting the upheaval. Wilson’s enemies could easily see his hand since the constitution drafted that December, provided that all Indian residents of Allegany and Cattaraugus, whether Seneca or not, could vote in Seneca Nation elections; this provision was modified in 1862 to only allow male Senecas ­twenty-one years or older to vote in Seneca Nation elections.37 On March 10, 1848, Thomas wrote a letter to Commissioner Medill describing the unrest in Seneca Country. He observed that the Senecas themselves were 33

34 35

36 37

Philip Thomas to William Medill, August 28, 1846, oia, M234 nyar, MR586, RG75, NA. See also Thomas to Medill, May 15, 1846, September 25, 1846; Thomas to T. Hartley Crawford, July 31, 1845, oia, M234, nyar, MR 586, RG 75, NA; Thomas to Medill, March 10, August 30, September 9, November 25, 1848, oia, M234, nyar, MR 587, RG75, NA. After the revolution, Thomas later broke with Wilson. Thomas to President Millard Fillmore, February 24, 1851, oia, M234, nyar, MR587, RG75, NA. By mid-century, there were well over two hundred Onondagas and Cayugas living in Seneca territory, mostly at Cattaraugus. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1852 (Washington, d.c., 1852), 27 [hereafter arcia]. For criticisms of Wilson, see chiefs’ petition to remove Peter Wilson as the Seneca interpreter, October 27, 1848, oia, M234 nyar, MR586, RG75, NA. He was accused of being a drunk, an adulterer, and a brawler. William Jemerson [Seneca Nation Clerk] to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, February 10, 1851; Philip Thomas to President Millard Fillmore February 24, 1851, with attached Women’s Petition [Margaret Two Guns, Nancy Jimerson, Lucy King, Julia Silverheels, Rachel Bigdeer, Widow George, and Mrs. Allen Jimeson], February 10, 1851, oia, M234, nyar, MR587, RG75, NA. Wilson survived these criticisms and later represented the Six Nations Council as the Cayuga delegate in pursuit of their Kansas Claims. For Seneca support of Wilson, see Henry Two Guns to Thomas, September 14, 1846, oia, M234, nyar, MR586, RG75, NA. As late as 1853, prominent Senecas were defending Wilson. John Luke and Zechariah L. Jimeson to Thomas, May 14, 1853; Ely S. Parker to President of the United States, March 21, 1853, oia, M234, nyar, MR588, RG75, NA. Peter Wilson to Thomas, December 23, 1847, oia, M234, nyar, MR 586, RG75, NA; and Wilson to Thomas July 18, 1848 OIA, M234, nyar, MR 587, RG75, NA. George H.J. Abrams, The Seneca People (Phoenix: Indian Tribal Series, 1976), 67.

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beginning to turn against “their irresponsible government of their chiefs and are even looking to the establishment of a Representative Republic.” Thomas pointed out that the first stage deprived the chiefs of their power to sell Seneca lands, the next took away their right to appoint municipal officers, and finally, they were removed from controlling the Seneca Nation’s funds.”38 After receiving information from Wilson about a planned public meeting scheduled to be held at Cattaraugus, Thomas wrote to Commissioner Medill once again indicating that a political upheaval was about to take place. On September 9, 1848, Thomas indicated to the commissioner that the tense situation was about to explode. “There is reason to believe they [Cattaraugus Senecas] are approaching towards serious convulsion, and perhaps a radical change in their form of government.” He continued by pointing out that a “large majority of Warriors appear to have lost all confidence in the chiefs….” Thomas ended his letter by stating that he was told by Wilson that at this recent meeting at Cattaraugus, the participants voted with “great unanimity” to abolish the council of chiefs by the end of the year.39 In 1848, two specific segments of the community groups arose to challenge the chiefs: one group composed of some of the warriors; and a determined group representing some of the Seneca women.40 From January through ­October, 1848, the warriors sent petitions to the War Department, then in charge of administering Indian policy. Some of the petitioners in opposition to the chiefs’ position included the names of the revolutionaries who drafted the Seneca Constitution in December, 1848.41 On October 11, a petition signed by the warriors urged the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to ignore the protest of the chiefs “until you receive an expression of our people who are in favor of the proposed change in the distribution of annuities.”42 “Some of these warriors were the same individuals who overthrew the council of chiefs seven weeks later.”43 38 39 40

41 42 43

Thomas to Medill, March 10, 1848. Thomas to Medill, September 9, 1848. Warriors Petition to William Marcy, March 23, 1848, John Bennett, John Green Blanket, et al., to William Marcy, October 11, 1848; Petition of Headmen and Warriors to Secretary of War, January 26, 1848, oia, M234, nyar, MR587, RG75, NA. Seneca Women’s Petition, October 13, 1848, oia, M234, nyar, MR587, RG75, NA. Warriors’ Petition to William Marcy, March 23, 1848; Bennett, Green Blanket, et al., to Marcy, October 11, 1848. Sub-agent Shankland report to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, December 30, 1848 with attached census, October 30, 1848 In: arcia (1848–1849), 571. Bennett, Green Blanket, et al., to Marcy, October 11, 1848. I compared the names of revolutionaries at the Seneca Constitutional Convention of December 4–5, 1848 with the names on the warriors’ petitions. Resolutions adopted by the Constitutional Convention of the Seneca Nation of Indians, December 4, 1848, oia,

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On October 13, six Seneca women— Gaa-nah-hoh, Julia Dennis, Polly Johnson, Martha Phillips, Jane Scott, and Betsy Snow proclaimed that the women of  the Seneca Nation had “equal rights” to the annuities “with the men and with the chiefs.” They added that the chiefs, warriors, men, and children were “all on the same footing.” They criticized the new federal sub-agent Robert Shankland, who had formerly been the editor of the Cattaraugus Republican, for delaying payment to individuals “on the ground that the chiefs insist on the observance of the customs in regard to that.”44 A month later, Shankland attempted to distribute annuities to Seneca heads of families at the council house on the Cattaraugus Reservation. Carrying out the intent of a congressional act of 1847, he began to distribute moneys to individuals and not the chiefs. A scuffle ensued and the tribal marshals removed two of the combatants, who happened to be two of the chiefs. Shankland later reported that he admired the chiefs’ determination to challenge on the annuity issue, but that he “disliked their system of tactics and regretted their obstinancy.”45 He then went to Allegany to carry out his work there. The continued support of the chiefs in some quarters at Allegany and Cattaraugus should not be surprising even after what had transpired since 1797. Their ranks included distinguished Senecas, including Governor Blacksnake, John Seneca, and Seneca White. Nevertheless, the chiefs’ political opponents grouped the chiefs together and held them all responsible for the sins of the past, whether they were involved or not. By 1848, a sizeable number of Senecas had come to believe that the chiefs were incapable of protecting the remaining Seneca land base. It was frequently expressed, even as the Senecas debated the annuity issue. Who actually overthrew the rule of chiefs in 1848? Thomas did have influence, but he hardly directed the revolution. Abler provides the best analysis of the revolutionaries. He suggests that the two sides generally “presented a mirror image of each other.”46 Most of each group were not literate in English. There were exceptions. Chief Maris Pierce was a graduate of Dartmouth and Chief Nathanial Strong had attended Yale, and revolutionary leader Solomon [Mc]Lane, the first President of the Seneca Nation under its elected system installed in 1848, was a teacher. William Jimerson had been the Clerk, previously

44 45 46

M234. nyar, MR587, RG, NA. The adopted constitution and resolutions have been conveniently reprinted in:. Wilkins, Ed., Documents of Native American Political Development, 1500s–1933, 80–82. Seneca Women’s Petition, October 13, 1848. Sub-agent Shankland report to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, December 30, 1848 with attached census, October 30, 1848 In: arcia (1848–1849), 571. Abler, “Factional Dispute and Party Conflict…, 152.

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serving as the recording secretary of the Chiefs’ Council. Eight of the chiefs had been leaders in pushing emigration and fourteen were against emigration to the West; the new government proponents included one emigration leader (George Jemison) and seven against leaving New York. Abler, however, does bring out several differences. The anthropologist states that the revolutionaries were much younger than the chiefs. Perhaps surprisingly to contemporary Senecas, he concludes that the chiefs included more of the Christian acculturated “faction.”47 We do know that [Mc]Lane, the chair of the Constitutional Convention and first President of the Seneca Nation of Indians, had been born into the Turtle Clan on the Buffalo Creek Reservation around 1819 and raised by Chief Young King. After he left the presidency, he served the Seneca Nation as Peacemaker and he and his wife joined Asher Wright’s United Mission Church in 1850. He died a year later.48 The Seneca revolutionaries who approved the constitution of 1848 were not naïve children manipulated by outsiders such as Thomas. The Senecas themselves saw the need for change. Without question, Seneca politicians took advantage presented to them and this was their chance to overthrow a system that had increasingly been ineffective. The revolutionaries were capable of successfully using the politics of blame to castigate their opponents for all the bad things that had occurred to the Senecas the American Revolution. An example of their political acumen is revealed by noting that the revolutionary John Luke was elected five times to the Presidency of the Seneca Nation in the 1850s and early 1860s, an achievement not repeated until the era of William C. Hoag four decades later.49 At the December 4, 1848 convention, 70 delegates joined with McLane and William Jimerson to sign the constitution overthrowing the council of chiefs and their rule. Under the constitution whose language was drafted by Cattaraugus County attorney Chester Howe, the Seneca revolutionaries created a new elected system of government. Elections were set annually in May and the Seneca Nation Tribal Council would hold its meeting once a year on the first day of June, but extra sessions could be convened by the president in case 47 48

49

Ibid. 152–158. I confirmed the accuracies of Abler’s conclusion comparing the list of delegates at the December 4–5, 1848 constitutional convention with the membership list of Rev. Thompson Harris’ and Asher Wright’s churches at Buffalo Creek and Cattaraugus. David George-Shongo, Jr., Onondawa’ga’ Gano’kyëdoh Nogeh’oweh [Seneca Nation of Indians]; The 160 Years of our Republican Government (Allegany Territory: Seneca Nation of Indians, 2008), 3–4 Sometimes the name was spelled out as “McLane” and at other times, “Lane.” See George-Shongo’s articles about him in the Seneca Nation of Indians’ Official Newsletter (December 23, 2016): 13–14; (January 13, 2016): 24. George-Shongo, Jr., Onondawa’ga’ Gano’kyëdoh Nogeh’oweh, 10–11, 17–29, 64–73.

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of crises.50 Later in 1898, the constitution was amended to hold elections every two years beginning in 1900.51 Some of the notables who made their mark included Luke and John Cook, who had offered high praise for the Quakers in 1846. At least thirteen of the delegates had previously placed their names on petitions as head men or warriors of the Seneca Nation—Cook, Big Chief, John General, John Greenblanket, Thomas Halfwhite, John Jimeson, Alexander Tallchief, Little Joe, Peter and Thomas Snow, John Wilson, Young Joe and Solomon O’Bail, the latter a descendant of Cornplanter. Four had signed the Buffalo Creek Treaty of 1838—John Bark, John Bennett, George Jemison and John Tallchief. Two of these men—Bennett and Jemison—had been implicated in the corruption scandals surrounding the treaty. Four of the delegates had put their names on the compromise treaty of 1842—Bark, Jemison, George Deer and John Pierce.52 After the constitutional convention ended, the chiefs sent a protest, notarized by Reverend Wright, which they forwarded by their chairman Thomas Jimeson to President James Polk. They urged the lame duck president not to be swayed by “a certain portion of the warriors” who acted to abolish “our ancient legislature of government.” The chiefs asked Polk to suspend judgment and not recognize the new government.” It is important to note that on this and later ex-chiefs’ protests, the names of three future popularly elected presidents of the Seneca Nation—Henry Two Guns, Zachariah Jimeson, and John Jacket- appeared.53 Thomas, serving as an envoy, soon transmitted the constitution and resolutions of the Seneca constitutional convention to the Office of Indian Affairs. In it, Thomas and his Hicksite colleagues claimed that they were not taking sides, and that the new constitution represented the beginning of their withdrawal from philanthropic activities among the Senecas. They added that they had not interfered in the political life of the Senecas, but had largely focused on helping preserve their land base and educating their children. However, in

50 51 52 53

Resolutions adopted by the Constitutional Convention of the Seneca Nation of Indians, December 4, 1848, oia, M234. nyar, MR587, RG, NA. Wilkins, Ed., Documents of Native American Political Development, 1500s–1933, 75–82. George–Shongo, Jr., Onondawa’ga’ Gano’kyëdoh Nogeh’oweh, 112n. I compared the names of revolutionaries at the Seneca Constitutional Convention of December 4–5, 1848 with the names on the treaties of 1838 and 1842. Seneca Chiefs to President James K. Polk, December 7, 1848, oia, nyar, M234, MR587, RG75, NA. Chiefs Petition to President of the United States, January 25, 1849, oia, M234, nyar, MR 587, RG75, NA.

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later letters he sent off to ­Washington, Thomas clearly took sides, lobbying for recognition of the new government.54 From December 1848 through February 1849, Seneca supporters and opponents of the new government flooded Washington and Albany with petitions and sent delegates to lobby, attempting to convince legislators either to accept or reject recognition of the new government. In January 29, 1849, 51 of the headmen and warriors, including Harrison Halftown, who later served in the elected government as Seneca Nation clerk for over two decades, petitioned President Polk. They insisted that the chiefs had been misrepresented by their enemies. They opposed the new government which they claimed was composed of discredited chiefs who had been deposed for violating custom and for being heavy drinkers. Three days later, the Polk administration, nevertheless, recognized the new government.55 On April 11, 1849, the New York State Legislature passed a law recognizing the Seneca Republic and its new government. The same day, the legislature passed “An Act to Benefit the Indians.” The act recognized Indian common law marriages and the right of Seneca peacemaker courts to marry Indians “with the same force and effect as if by a justice of the peace.” In a move clearly intended not to benefit the Indians, section 7 of the law “allowed” the Indian governments to divide their land to Indian individuals or families in “severalty and in fee simple, according to the laws of this state,” but prevented the alienation of these lands “to any person other than the occupant, or his or her family.” Section 11 “allowed” the New York State commissioners of the land office to accept “such sums of money as such Indians may wish to put in trust with the state of New York,” where it would be “vested in good and safe securities by the comptroller, or in stocks of this state bearing interest at the rate of six per cent….”56 The Seneca Nation held its first popular election for president under its new constitution on May 1, 1849. McLane’s National Ticket received 187 of the 54

55

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Philip Thomas to William Medill, February 2, 1849. In: Society of Friends, Joint Committee on Indian Affairs of the 4 Yearly Meetings of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Genesee, 1849, 1–2. Thomas to William Medill, March 23, May 9, 1849; Thomas to Thomas Ewing, April 8, 1849, oia, M234, nyar, MR587, RG75, NA. Seneca Headmen and Warriors [opposed to the new government] to President Taylor January 29, 1849, oia, M234, nyar, MR587, RG75, NA. The ex-chiefs bitterly reacted to the federal recognition of the new government. Maris Pierce to President Zachary Taylor, March 13, 1849, oia, M234, nyar, MR587, RG75, NA; Governor William L. Marcy to Pierce, February 14, 1849, bhml; Marcy to Pierce, February 14, 1849, bhml. The revolutionaries known as the New Government Party countered these efforts by the ex-chiefs. Laws of New York, chap. 420 (April 11, 1849), 576. nys Assembly Document #189 (March 27, 1849) chap. 378 (March 27; April 11, 1849), 530, 721.

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307 votes cast. At least some of the supporters of the now ex-chiefs boycotted the election in protest. McLane was elected President, William Jimerson was elected clerk and as one of the peacemakers, and Andrew John, Sr., treasurer. Two future elected Seneca presidents—John Luke from Cattaraugus and Peter Jimeson from Allegany—were elected as councilors. Luke also was elected ­superintendent of schools. Most of the then eighteen tribal councilors, not the  sixteen that serve today, had been delegates at the December 1848 constitutional convention. Among the councilors elected from Cattaraugus was George Jemison, a controversial former pro-emigration chief. In this election, some of the chiefs participated, but not for the presidency of the Seneca Nation. In the election of May 1, John Seneca, the consensus builder and well-­ respected reformer of 1845, won two positions: peacemaker and assessor. Other chiefs who participated met defeat at the polls. Chiefs Seneca White and Maris Pierce were defeated for the position of peacemaker, Chief Thomas Jimeson for treasurer, and Chief Owen Blacksnake for marshal. Pierce was also was defeated for the position of Seneca Nation clerk.57 On the day after the election, President Zachary Taylor wrote his “children and friends” in the Seneca Nation. He insisted that the earlier decision made by the Indian Office in February to recognize the new tribal governmental structure had been done by a proper department of the United States government. Attempting to deflect criticism, Taylor added that the decision had been made [a month before] before he had assumed the presidency.58 Chief Pierce continued to blame Thomas and the Hicksites. Refusing to admit that the chiefs had brought these sweeping changes on themselves, Pierce wrote to Joseph Elkinton: “If the Hicksite would let us alone, we can get along better, but now they are using their influence to break us down, both at Washington City and in this state.”59 Yet, the chiefs were to wage a losing battle. McLane, who had been drafted into the position of provisional president of the Seneca Nation at the December constitutional convention, countered the chiefs’ moves. He wrote to Washington officials repeating the litany of 57 58 59

Peacemakers’ and Clerk’s affidavit Re: 1st election, May 1, 1849, oia, M234, nyar, MR 587, RG75, NA. George-Shongo, Ono’dowa’ga:’ Gano’kyëdoh, 60. President Zachary Taylor “to his children and friends,” May 2, 1849 oia, M234, nyar, MR587, RG75, NA. Maris Pierce to Joseph Elkinton, June 10, 1850, Haverford College, copy found in Seneca Nation Archives. Pierce had earlier written to Elkinton stating he could not believe that the Friends supported the revolution of 1848. Pierce to Elkinton, February 21, 1849, Maris Pierce mss., bhml. By January 27, however, 1853, Pierce concluded that the chiefs’ efforts to convince Washington officials about the need to return to a oouncil of chiefs-styled government was futile. Pierce to Thomas, January 27, 1853, Pierce mss, bhml.

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c­ omplaints against the council of chiefs. McLane insisted that the chiefs had to be held accountable to the people “for their acts, however offensive they might be; and who cling to the old institutions with the tenacity of men accustomed to no restraint.” While praising Thomas and the other Quakers, he insisted that they had not interfered in the final Seneca tribal decision to establish a new form of government. He made it clear that the Senecas themselves had come to the conclusion that changes were a necessity.60 Not all the chiefs accepted Taylor’s decision as being the final word. For the next decade and a half, the majority of these ex-chiefs, now referred to as the “Old Chiefs Party,” attempted to reassert their powers, both through appeals and protests to Washington. They also added a new tactic, namely they would enter the new electoral process and attempt to win the presidency of the Seneca Nation. They succeeded as early as early as the third annual election of Seneca Presidents and continued to win elective office off and on in the next two decades. When ex-chief Seneca White was elected President of the Seneca Nation in 1851. Pierce clearly saw this election as a rejection of what he referred to as “our venerable friend P.E. Thomas who had claimed “all along that the chiefs were in the minority, when we tell him that it is not so…” “Now he will see in black and white.” Pierce added that he hoped as a result of White’s election to the presidency that “our friends, Philadelphia Quakers,” will see how schemers such as Peter Wilson have misled them.61 In a letter in February 24, 1852, Thomas defended his actions insisting that he was merely a facilitator, just as he had been in 1842 during the lead up to the federal Seneca treaty that had restored Allegany and Cattaraugus Territories.62 Three weeks later, the ex-chiefs, who had just lost the recent Seneca election to John Luke, petitioned the New York State Legislature for support of their efforts to change the Seneca elective system of government back to rule by a council of chiefs. Clearly referring to Thomas and the Hicksites, they insisted that their opponents produced a “paper constitution for a people who could not read, which has until this year, been exercised by elected officials who could not write.” They claimed that the revolution was incited “by white men, some of whom meant well….”63

60 61 62 63

Solomon McLane to William Medill, February 16, 1849, oia, M234, nyar, MR587, RG75, NA. Maris Pierce to Joseph Elkinton, May 7, 1851, Haverford College [copy in Seneca Nation Archives]. Philip Thomas to J.B. Pierce, Maris Pierce mss., February 24, 1852, bhml. Memorial to the President of the United States, March 12, 1852; Memorial to New York State Legislature, March 22, 1852, oia, M234, nyar, MR588, RG75, NA.

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While funding the establishment of the Seneca asylum to provide succor and education to orphan and destitute boys and girls, Thomas continued to serve the Senecas as an envoy every time the New Government Party defeated the Old Chiefs Party in the 1850s. In the mid 1850s, he and the Friends joined the Senecas in countering local efforts, that began in 1840, aimed at seizing and selling off Seneca reservation lands for Indian failures to pay taxes for the maintenance of roads and bridges in Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Erie Counties. He also repeated his case against Indian removal policies frequently haranguing against the rapacious land sharks that seemed to always be around the Senecas attempting to get at their lands.64 Thomas vehemently opposed re-opening treaty negotiations with federal officials for fear that this type of action might lead once again to talk of their removal to the West. Instead, Thomas continued to urge the Tonawandas to join their kin and relocate to the Cattaraugus reservation, just like the majority of the Buffalo Creek Senecas had done in the mid 1840s. His position did not change over time. which put him in direct conflict with the Tonawanda Council of Chiefs, which continued to blame him and the Hicksites for not doing enough to get their lands back in 1842.65 Understanding that Thomas had political connections in high places, the Senecas used Thomas for their own purposes, using flattery and playing on his ego by giving him an Onöndawa´ga:´ name, adopting him, and even designating him as an envoy. In Seneca society, all of these honors required reciprocal obligations. As seen by the Senecas themselves, Thomas’ responsibilities to them was for him to gain access to formerly closed political offices in Albany and Washington and to generate favorable attention to help them fight removal pressures and remain in New York. Thus, while Thomas believed he was directing a transformation of the Senecas through constitutional change in 1848, the Senecas who made the revolution did so for far different reasons and had no desire for United States citizenship and New York State jurisdiction. 64

65

Philip Thomas to George W. Manypenny, June 6, 1855, with attached notice of a land sale for unpaid tax payments; Thomas to Manypenny undated month and day, 1857. oia, M234 nyar, MR 588, RG75, NA. NA. Thomas to George T. Trimble, Amos Willetts, and William C. White, November 26, 1856, Papers and Letters Relating to the Work of the Joint Indian Committee of Four Yearly Meetings, 1835–1863, File 21: 1856–1857, hrr, Records of the New York Yearly Meetings [transferred to Swarthmore College]. For the laws allowing the counties to levy taxes, see Laws of New York, 63rdsess. chap.254 (May 9, 1840): 26–27. Laws of New York, 64th sess., chap.166 (May 4,1841): 134–136. Documents and Official Reports Illustrating the Causes Which Led to the Revolution…, 77–91. Philip Thomas to James W. Denver, July 21, 1857, oia, M234, nyar, MR 588, RG75, NA. See also Hauptman, The Tonawanda Seneca’s Heroic Battle Against Removal, 110.

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They seized on issues important to them, not those proposed by the Hicksites. Theirs was the politics of blame. They were reacting to what they saw as the failures of chiefly rule in protecting the vast Seneca landholdings in western New York from 1797 onward and the inequitable distribution of treaty annuities by the chiefs. To the powerful ‘mothers of the nation,’ the chiefs also ­ignored their voices in dealing with the alienation of tribal lands. In 1858, Thomas formally addressed the President and Council of the Seneca Nation for the last time. In it, he claimed that his only object was to “secure for them permanent homes, and to instruct them in habits and pursuits by which they might provide for their families, and be elevated to a moral and social condition that would render them worthy to be received as citizens of the United States with all our privileges and immunities.” He insisted that state officials had good intentions and benevolence towards the Indians, and that New York was “the only one of the original thirteen states of the Union, in which a tribe of aborigines has continued to exist as an organized body, elevated from a state of ignorance and barbarism to a condition of civilization and prosperity, under a free, elective, constitutional Republican Government, recognized both by the Government of the United States and New York, and protected by laws adapted to their circumstances and condition, and enacted by themselves.”66 While the Allegany and Cattaraugus Senecas periodically accepted help from Thomas and the Friends in publicizing their plight to help them resist their total removal to the West, these same Senecas clearly realized that the Hicksite political agenda did not completely fit their needs. Instead, the Seneca Nation, employing much of its own highly-charged political behavior, actually adapted creating its own unique confederated political structure consisting of a power-sharing arrangement of two very different residential territories, Allegany and Cattaraugus, that continues to this very day. Despite long-term inequitable leasing, threats of allotment, federal termination policies, and the disastrous building of the Kinzua Dam that flooded approximately 10,000 acres in the 1960s, this pragmatic political compromise between these two territories has lasted 170 years-much, much longer then Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union formed in the ashes of World War I.67 66 Thomas, An Address to Edward Purse [Pierce]. President of the Seneca Nation, 1–4. 67 For the Seneca Nation’s uniquely confederated political structure, see Hauptman, In the Shadow of Kinzua…, 3–18.

Chapter 9

Tunesassa Echoes and the Temperance Struggle: a Family Tradition at Tunesassa Quaker Indian School, Allegany Indian Reservation across Generations Thomas J. Lappas 1 Introduction In 1914, at the Annual Meeting of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Dorcas Spencer, the National Superintendent of Work among Indians, delivered her annual report, which summarized the work of the wctu in Indian Country. She proceeded state-by-state, summarizing reports she had received or providing her own first-hand observations. When she got to New York, she asserted, “This is our banner state.” She had received accounts from Sarah L. Trippe, the New York State Superintendent of Work among Indians that described temperance activity among the Senecas. She intimated how and why the state, with a comparatively small Native American population, had become so successful in the wctu: “The Society of Friends has maintained an Industrial School on a reservation for a hundred years, and trained their pupils in intelligent and capable leadership. One is the active, thoughtful president of a local w.c.t.u., who lately planned a successful temperance rally and picnic with Young Campaigners and a fine program.”1 The president and pupil (by this time alumna) of the Quaker school was Lydia Pierce who, born Lydia Jackson, was an Onondaga woman who lived on the Seneca Allegany Reservation and had attended the adjacent Quaker Indian Boarding School at Tunesassa throughout the 1870s. In later decades, Lydia and her husband Fred Pierce visited the school ­frequently, eventually, bringing their young children Edward and Alva along with them. When the boys reached school age, they attended Tunesassa, too. 1 wctu Annual Meeting Minutes, 1914: 151, Temperance and Prohibition Papers, a joint microfilm publication of the Ohio Historical Society, the Michigan Historical Collections, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, sponsored by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Columbus: Microfilmed by the Ohio Historical Society, 1977, hereafter WCTU-AMM.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_010

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The Pierces were frequent guests of the Tunesassa students’ temperance organization, “The Tunesassa Temperance Workers,” which produced a regular newsletter entitled Temperance Echoes. Later, the organization evolved into the “General Improvement Society,” which produced Tunesassa Echoes. Students signed temperance pledges, sang temperance songs, made public admissions of their transgressions, and in many other ways sought to promote abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, foul language, cruelty to animals, and other vices. Many of these goals matched precisely with the wctu’s efforts to inculcate Native Americans with the organization’s values and to encourage assimilation into the capitalist workforce of the broader society. When Lydia herself became Superintendent of Work among Indians for the wctu in New York State, she was able to promote wctu activity among Native American children in New York State and even across the nation. This chapter will explore the substance of the temperance activities, especially the poems, speeches, and other writings of the children and adults involved in the temperance movement at Tunesassa, focusing on the way they (consciously or subconsciously) placed alcohol, temperance, Native American history and culture, and Western or Euro-American cultural traditions into a broader narrative of human progress. Since there are many examples of student writing in the Quaker archives at Haverford College, I indulge in the liberal use of excerpts from the students’ meeting minutes, newsletters, speeches, and essays. Since Native American children’s voices are so rarely available in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both the novelty and the richness of their words seemed to justify lengthier passages.2 As any teacher knows, it is often difficult to discern when a student’s written words reflect their deeply held beliefs and when they are simply parroted phrases and ideas that they are borrowing from the instructor. Even in a modern, comparatively democratic classroom, the power relationship often steers students to give the teacher what they want to hear. One can only imagine that a more powerful trend in that direction occurred with the students writing or speaking at an Indian boarding school. However, at some point those words, even if mimicked, shaped, in part, the young minds of the speakers and writers who expressed them. It is also the case that many of the young people discussed below were campus leaders: officers of the temperance society, commencement

2 I have marked omissions with ellipses, left spelling as it is in the original (unless other wise noted), and have indicated any changes made to the text with bracketing. Although I tried to keep the texts as close to the original as possible, modifying words or phrases was sometimes necessary for clarity.

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speakers, and such. ­Therefore, they were not among the most rebellious sorts at Tunesassa. Because of this self selection, (and because, at some level, it will be impossible to discern disingenuousness) the assumption is that the words on paper were close to the thoughts that children came to accept, even if that acceptance came through repetition or the firm guidance of their instructors. Although Tunesassa had a justifiable reputation for being more humane than other Indian boarding schools—a reputation which persists in more recent historical literature—this did not mean the process of acculturation, attacks on native languages, or trying to relegate Indian traditions to the past was any less a part of the agenda of the Quaker-run school. Yet, within this acculturative enterprise, several elements within the temperance efforts at Tunesassa resembled Iroquois traditions.3 These include women directing the moral education of boys who would become the military and political leaders of the community and a profound emphasis on the spoken word as a desirable trait.4 Tunesassa offered the space for parental participation in their children’s lives in ways not common in other Indian schools. Usually forbidden or at least severely limited at Indian boarding schools, the role of parents at Tunesassa is indicative of the distinctive treatment of children there. Such practices allowed moral education to come from both white school officials and Indian families. While this chapter examines temperance activities at Tunesassa specifically, it provides some brief comparisons to temperance instruction and student activities in boarding schools nationwide. 2

Quakers, Temperance, and the Tunesassa School

Tunesassa evolved as an Indian boarding school, run by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, beginning with Joseph Elkinton’s effort to establish a school on the Allegany Reservation. He began with an informal school 3 Tunesassa has not received the more complete treatment of other schools in Iroquoia or across the country. See Keith R. Burich, The Thomas Indian School and the “Irredeemable” Children of New York (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015); Marilyn Irvin Holt, “First Solution: Seneca,” in Indian Orphanages (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2001), 49–83; Lois Barton, A Quaker Promise Kept: Philadelphia Friends’ Work with the Allegany Senecas, 1795–1960 (Eugene, OR: Spencer Butte Press, 1990); Rayner Wickersham Kelsey, “Tunesassa,” in Friends and the Indian, 1655–1917 (Philadelphia: The Associated Executive Committee on Indian Affairs, 1917), 89–110; Alberta Austin, Ne’ho niyo’d”e:n”o= That’s What It was Like (Lackawana, NY: Rebco Enterprises Inc., 1986). 4 For further evidence of the strong link between oratorical skills in Haudenosaunee tradition, see Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred, Peace Power and Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 17.

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at Cold Spring in 1816, but the school at the Quaker Mission began in earnest in 1822. In 1852, the boarding school at Tunesassa was established. There were six girls who boarded at the school and about thirty additional day students. By the end of the 1850s, the day student population ebbed and it became a dedicated boarding school, catering almost entirely to Iroquois children. The number of students hovered around a few dozen for most of its existence.5 Born in 1862 Lydia Jackson attended the Tunesassa School in the 1870s. Her Seneca father, Jesse Jackson, had attended school with the Quakers, too. Her mother, an Onondaga woman named Lucy Jackson, does not appear to have been literate. In the 1890s Kansas land claim document she signed with a mark, not her own signature.6 The trajectory of Lydia Pierce’s temperance career was mirrored by a parallel belief in the need for literacy and Western education among the Iroquois and all Native Americans. As a student at Tunesassa, in 1879, Lydia penned an essay titled “Memory of our Fathers.” In it Jackson reflected upon both the traditional cultural practices of the Iroquois, placing cultural and material attainments, religious beliefs, temperance, and industry into a narrative of progress. She opened the essay with the following words: “Few of the Indians in former days knew how to read or write. They did not have much else to do but hunting…. As for bread they did not have their corn ground by grist-mills but the women pounded them [sic] with a mortar and pestle and made squaw bread”[underlining in the original]. Marking the shift from men focusing their food procurement efforts in hunting she declared, “But the former days of our fathers have passed away in which they lived by hunting and fishing, and have now entered into another and different course of life.” Notably, in a move reminiscent of the male Europeans who ignored women’s economic contributions, she excluded the farming that her mothers would have done. She recognized the link between architecture and cultural change. Several men built log homes in Old Town. Then, “soon after the Indians entirely abandoned their old habits.” She then lauded the individual productive efforts of Iroquois men who farmed successfully: “John Mt. Pleasant of Tuscarora Reservation who raised last year 1500 bushels of oats and 1600 bushels of wheat, 500 5 Kelsey, 98–99. 6 The records of students before February 24, 1886 are sparse due to a fire at Tunesassa that destroyed the school building and the record books of the school. Apparently the books were reconstructed from memory, from note in the file folder, AA47: “Records of Indian Children, 1888.” Lydia Jackson’s entry in the school roster lists her tribe as “O” for Onondaga and has no additional information. See AA47: Haverford College Library, Special Collections, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Hereafter pymic. “New York Indians,” No. 1218, 63678, Received November 11, 1901, Kansas Claim, National Archives.

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barrels of apples, 300 barrels of peaches, … he has a beautiful farm of 200 acres. He owns two reapers, one mowing machine and two threshing machines.” She continued, emphasizing the new gender roles: “His wife who is a Seneca woman keeps the house neat and in order.” She then laid out the threats to universal advancement: “I think the worst faults amongst us is [sic] laziness and intemperance. Cider seems to do more harm among men. It seems also to do more harm than whiskey. There we have formed a temperance society that would prevent drunkards to those who would keep the pledge which they have made. For there are many men who have met a drunkard’s death.”7 A few years earlier, in September 1876 a student named William C. Hoag penned a similar essay, though it less explicitly touched on the civilization process.8 He opened with the declaration that “[i]t is very nice to be part of a ­temperance society, and what a pity it is for so many people to be intemperate[. S]ometimes boys and girls like to drink cider and wine and keep on drinking after a while they want something stronger and if they do not stop they soon become drunkards then they keep on drinking and drinking till they sometimes lose their lives by it.” He continued, “When men are drunk they abuse their wives and children & often drive them out of the house [&] sometimes burn the house. They often get into a fight and get hurt very badly or get killed or run over by [train] carse[.] that is the last of them and they are lost for ever the bible says no drunkard shall enter the kingdom of heaven.”9 The contexts in which these essays were produced are not apparent. They may have been for a writing class or an extracurricular project. Although both students referred to being members of a temperance society, it is not clear what that meant, specifically. The Six Nations Temperance League had been in existence since the 1830s and it is likely that this was the organization to which they were referring. By the 1890s a student temperance society had been formed, called the Tunesassa Temperance Workers, which produced Temperance Echoes, the precursor to Tunesassa Echoes. Additional information from the student organization is scarce since, in 1886, a fire destroyed the main building and the records inside, which is around the time that the first student temperance society may have been formed. However, in January 1891 the 7 Lydia Jackson, “Memories of our Fathers,” January 1879, pymic, AA65: Friends’ Indian School (Tunesassa) Student Essays. She also discusses medicines prepared by Iroquois healers, explained how women prepared clothing from a combination of annuity cloth and animal skins, beliefs about the souls of the dead, and the role of witchcraft in Iroquois belief systems. 8 In almost all of the children’s works, the original dates were composed according to the Friends’ conventions. In this case, September was written “9 Mo,” reflecting the Quaker education he received. 9 William C. Hoag, September 1876, pymic: AA65: Student Essays.

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Temperance Workers met and Lydia, Fred, and “Baby Edward” visited the organization and apparently had a nice time with the children. Haudenosaunee adults, generally, and parents, in particular, were quite involved at Tunesassa. The minutes from later meetings listed the recent visitors: “Parents or relatives from this reservation who have visited pupils since school began are James and Electra Crouse, William and Clarissa Lee, Hiram and Libbie Watt, Eliza Curry, Ida Curry, Eliza Redeye, Sara Snow, Hiram Jacobs and wife, Sylvester and Malinda Crouse, Harry Pierce, Mary [last name missing], also Gibson and Eliza Pierce, and Charles and Mary Gordon of Cornplanters [reservation, PA].”10 Though it is not clear how often children went home, this regular stream of visitors seems to contrast with boarding schools across the country where parental visits were more tightly circumscribed. Historian Brenda J. Child documents the cruel policies and individual bureaucrats’ decisions that kept Indian children from travelling home to visit their families at most schools.11 At Tunesassa, however, proximity coupled with a more acculturated group of familial visitors, made these visits possible. In 1891, the new superintendent of Tunesassa, James Henderson, initiated the Society for General Improvement for the students. Historian and Friend Lois Barton, who taught at the school decades later, suggested that the society was “patterned, no doubt, after the literary society he had become familiar with at boarding school.” Perhaps the Temperance Workers’ focus seemed too narrow to Henderson. Perhaps he thought that linking of literary pursuits with other activities would bring increased participation. Whatever the reasons for altering the student club, the new organization met every other Saturday and produced the handwritten Tunesassa Echoes every term. They also kept fairly consistent minutes, which, along with some of the newsletters, provide many insights into the children’s activities and the ideas to which they were exposed.12 The Society for General Improvement absorbed the membership of the Temperance Workers organization.13 At the first meeting, Henderson presided and worked out some logistics with the students. The constitution was established and the students adopted the motto “Temperance at all times, humanity to every living creature, general elevation of morals.” Officers included president, secretary, and editors of the paper, plus a standing committee to fill 10 11

Temperance Echoes, vol. 4, no. 5, AA64, pymic. Brenda J. Child, Chapter 4: “Homesickness” in Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900–1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 43–54. 12 Barton, Quaker Promise Kept, 44; James Henderson, An Autobiography of the Life and Religious Experience of James Henderson, a Minister in the Religious Society of Friends (Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1944). 13 “Temperance Acts,” ca. 1891, AA64, pymic.

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vacancies as needed. The president appointed an individual who was responsible for the temperance pledge and, presumably, keeping track of signatories. The first officers were Jesse John, President; Lillie Jimeson, Secretary; Crawford Nephew, Curator; James Henderson and Theodore Gordon were listed as “Assisting Committee.” Mary R. Batten and John Snyder were editors.14 At the next meeting the officers were shuffled around. “It was thought best that there should be some of both sexes appointed on the Assisting committee. And Mary McGirr was appointed in place of James Henderson.” They read declamations, essays, and excerpts from Tunesassa Echoes.15 By the June 19 meeting, Jesse John had left school and Henderson filled in as president, again. Apparently reflecting Quaker egalitarianism between the sexes and ages of people, the organization was remarkable in that students and faculty were, on paper at least, equals. Male and female students, too, shared power and extraordinary steps were taken to assure equal representation among the officers. The club was subject to the fluid nature of student enrollment at Tunesassa and all Indian schools. By November 4, 1892, several people left the school, at least one went to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. By the May 6, 1893 meeting, thirty-two students were there at the start of the meeting. Notably, Felix Scott was elected president at this meeting. Eight years later, Scott’s essays would be read to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and he would stand as commencement speaker during the formal spring exercises. The editors of Tunesassa Echoes concerned themselves with general internal matters of the school, including changes to the curriculum and physical plant. On December 6, 1902 students, probably Lavina A. Crouse or Victoria Jimeson, commented on the building renovations and other tangible improvements, but they expressed great excitement at the improvement of the teachers and the decision to separate examination periods from instructional time. Such changes revealed the apparent advancement in educational methods, putting the on par with other, presumably white, schools: “the best methods of Teaching are selected which makes it more interesting, also The Time is now set apart for Examination days which test and show the advancement of each student in the school.” A more formalized set of commencement exercises were also lauded. In sum, “The children are said to received [sic] a thorough education now, and this was not thought of a few years ago.” Coincidentally, special guests at this meeting included, “Freddie Pierce and his wife [Lydia] and her sister.”16 14 15 16

gis Minutes, 5/8/1891, pymic. gis Minutes, 5/22/1891, pymic. Tunesassa Echoes, 12/6/1902, AA64, pymic.

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While the editors often did their best to be serious journalists and meeting administrators, the children’s sense of humor peeked through. In one edition, the editors reported, “There was a sad accident happened in the Teachers room last night which was the death of a noble creature. I[t] was laid away in good condition in the Wood house Cemetery This morning by two boys. It was survived by four mourners. This creature was the Gold Fish which was in the water in the glass jar. We all knew the fish very well and it will be miss[ed] in the school room. [E]specially its mate will miss its company.”17 When the topic became alcohol and its effects on the community, the tone shifted and the budding leaders took their responsibility quite seriously. On February 5, 1897 the editors described the founding of Six Nations Temperance League and highlighted the relationship between the children’s and the adults’ organization: “We have attended many meetings of that society[. They] have given us much good advice.” The same article reported on the tragic violent deaths suffered by the community due to alcohol abuse, noting that in 1890 railroad accidents involving alcohol had occurred on almost all of the western New York reservations. “But some of the Indians have left the strong drink and become [C]hristians and have made many churches for the purpose of holding meetings and telling them how harmful the strong drink is.”18 While both the Six Nations Temperance League and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union had clear Christian orientations that emphasized the importance of individual salvation for both the drinker and the sinner, the question of “what to do” moved beyond the personal pledges and individual spirituality to the question of larger scale political action. For Native Americans, most of whom were not yet citizens, political participation was not a foregone conclusion. However, their education and formative development led them to conclude that citizenship was both inevitable and desirable. Probably influenced by their teachers, many of the leaders of the General Improvement Society produced essays that reflected Lydia Pierce’s earlier piece, which lauded the Euro-American view of progress, but also placed the Indians’ cultural development in a cultural-historical framework reminiscent of Lewis Henry Morgan’s stages of development. In this sense, their historical sensibilities, which were a product of their formal education, helped reinforce the perceived backwardness of their own traditions. As individuals and tribes rapidly progressed through the stages toward Euro-American civilization, they had to move quickly past the white man’s trap of alcohol in order to reach the full benefit of “Christian Citizenship,” a concept implicit in many of the children’s 17 18

Tunesassa Echoes, n.d. AA64, pymic. Tunesassa Echoes, 2/5/1897, AA64: pymic.

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writings. It was even the title of a wctu department. In 1916, the Department of Work Among Indians was absorbed by the Department of Christian Citizenship, implying that the planned trajectory for the tribes and individuals was cultural and political assimilation. We now turn to an investigation of how these ideas, and others of the wctu, emerged in the students’ own words. 3

Alcohol, Citizenship, and Civilization

The former president of the Society for General Improvement, Felix Scott composed an essay, which presumably would have been read at a temperance meeting, entitled, “Alcohol Talk” in which he discussed the destructive impact of alcohol in anthropomorphic form. He incorporated elements of “Scientific Temperance Instruction,” one of the mainstays of the wctu’s educational agenda, which tried to provide age-appropriate educational materials based on the best physiological knowledge of alcohol at the time. His main character bragged, “I can make a strong man stagger and throw him on the floor…. I can make him strike his wife, scold and handle his children roughly. I make a man bad by degrees.” Shifting from the social disorder to the personal loss the subject continued, “he loses his education and self-restraint and he is now ready to do anything or commit any crime.” Quoting Proverbs 23:29, the villain of the story continued: “The Bible gives warning; who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine.” He then shifted to the physiological, which reflected the state of Scientific Temperance Instruction of the time. “I make many people believe that I make them warmer when they are cold. I do not do any such thing. I only bring the blood to the surface [of] the body which makes them feel warmer by making the heart beat faster. On the contrary the body really gets colder as the heat comes to the surface it is more easily eradiated.”19 The physiological principles espoused by Scott reflected one of the key goals of the wctu in instructing all children, but especially Indian children. Since at least 1881 the wctu had been trying to get Scientific Temperance taught in all Indian boarding schools under jurisdiction of the Federal government. They had even formed a committee to meet with Hiram Price, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, to convince him to make it part of the curriculum in public schools in Indian Territory. Price responded very favorably and wrote a letter back to the committee indicating that “The suggestion meets my hearty 19

Felix Scott, “Alcohol Talk,” March 8, 1901, March 12, 1901, Read at the Committee. AA65

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approval, and books of that character will be included in the supplies for Indian schools to be purchased next Spring.”20 From that point on, state and national wctu leaders in Indian Work made special efforts to make sure such literature was available at Indian schools. Around 1907, Lydia Pierce had established a wctu chapter in the vicinity of Tunesassa. In 1910, Mrs. Marian G. Peckham submitted a report from the Department of Work Among Indians in New York, which was entered into the Annual Meeting Minutes. Although they erroneously refer to Lydia as a “full-blooded Seneca” not Onondaga (a mistake easy enough to make, since it is a Seneca reservation) the report lauded her as having “developed into an excellent worker. She has lately visited all the government schools for the Indians in the interest of Scientific Temperance Instruction and then wrote to the authorities requesting the use of the Gulick textbooks in the schools as more modern and up to date.” She also had “urgently requested the state commissioners of Indian schools in New York to use their authority in enforcing the Scientific Temperance Instruction law.”21 The apex of Scientific Temperance Instruction, the Frances Gulick Jewett volumes were the gold standard for the latest physiological information about alcohol and Felix Scott’s speech mirrored its message.22 Though Pierce’s breakthrough with Scientific Temperance literature was reported a few years after Scott’s speeches, Scientific Temperance was decades old in wctu circles and circulating literature was no doubt part of her visits in the 1890s and early years of the 1900s, when Scott would have been attending the temperance meetings. Alcohol was thus an impediment to God and good health, but also citizenship. The internalization of the Scientific Temperance views went part and parcel with the overarching assimilative mission of the Society for General Improvement. One salient example that allows a glimpse into a more complicated view of the role of Tunesassa and acculturation is a March 3, 1902 essay written by Felix H. Scott and read at the “closing exercises.” Scott was, apparently, the first diploma recipient from Tunesassa. He opened his speech, “The Outlook for the Indian” with this statement: “At the present time our people are intensely interested in the question of citizenship.” Scott suggested two positions, though his own words indicate at least three: “Some of us favor it, believing that we are able to place ourselves at the side of the white man; that we are as strong and are able to do everything that he does under the same conditions. We long to have the right to vote, and to take part in the destiny 20 21 22

WCTU-AMM, 1881, xxi; Hiram Price to Caroline Buell, November 28, 1881, in WCTU-AMM, 1881, cxxix. WCTU-AMM, 1910, 210. See Frances Gulick Jewett, Town and Country (Boston, MA, 1909).

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of the greatest nation of the world.” In contrast, he offered that “some of us believe that we are not able to be placed on the same footing as the white man; that we are not educated enough to see into the facts and truths of everything,” and then, without seeing it as a distinct position, he continued, “and that it is impossible to break off from the idea that we are free, and have been placed here independent, absolutely independent, by the Creator.” The third and second positions were, of course, distinct. The former suggests inferiority and inability; the latter suggests uniqueness and sovereignty. However, the logic of the argument depended on either a biblical or evolutionary explanation, coming out of the lessons in human evolution he would have encountered in his schooling. After commenting on the inevitability of Indian citizenship in the United States, he explained, “Even nature is working to bring all of the tribes and nations of the world together, to speak the same language, to have the same mode of thought, life and customs, as they had at the beginning.” He then posited the expansion from Asia into the Americas and the dispersal of the migrants into distinct tribes and distinct languages, where they extracted their living from the earth. “How wealthy they were if they had only known it! They had possession of the whole continent with all its forests, and fertile fields, and its rich mines beneath.” Setting aside the question of whether they had “known it,” Scott then shifted to more recent history, emphasizing a loss in physical prowess as they acculturated. “Our thoughts, mode of life, and customs have become somewhat similar to our white brothers.” Then, describing both the loss of game and loss of traditional skills, he continued, “Our health and bodily strength have deteriorated until we are no stronger than they. None of our people are able to run eighty miles a day now, or overtake a deer, (if he should see one,) both of which were easy to our forefathers. So we see that the two races are much more alike than they were at first.”23 Taking their rightful place in the social evolution of humanity necessarily required a loss in other, baser, abilities. The loss of physical prowess of schooled Indians was an old theme. In his scathing critique of white educational outreach to Native Americans, Jorge Noriega shares the example of Seneca leader Cornplanter, who in conversation with Thomas Jefferson reportedly said: We have had some experience of [white schools]; Several of our young people were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were all instructed in your Sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in 23

Felix Scott, “The Outlook for the Indian” 3/3/1902, AA65: Student Essays, pymic.

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the Woods, unable to bear Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a Deer, or kill an Enemy, spoke our Language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Counsellors; they were totally good for nothing.24 Scott’s speech, obviously, had a different perspective on the importance of both liberal and industrial education. He went on to decry the lack of inventiveness and work ethic of the Indians, especially when compared to the pluck of the recent European immigrants. However, he recognized the villainous behavior of all European transplants toward the Indians: “At first they only took what we let them have, but when their number increased they took possession of large tracts of land by force and drove our people to parts less desirable. If I were to enumerate all the wrongs the white men have inflicted on the Indians, it would make a long record of inhumanity.” This passing, but direct, criticism of the overall history of European-Indian relations contrasts with commencement speeches at other Indian boarding schools and may reflect the general Quaker recognition of broken white promises and nefarious dealings with the tribes.25 But despite this critique, the mantra of acculturation came through, “The only thing left for us to do that we may live happily in the years to come, is to prepare ourselves so that we can live as the white people, and adopt as our motto, ‘we must educate, we must educate, or we must perish.’” Then, in a mode of speaking that will resonate with anyone who has heard an American valedictory speech at a high school, he criticized his soon-to-be alma mater, comparing it unfavorably to other institutions: I suppose you have some feeling of discontent with this school because students of other schools are better qualified to do a certain thing or because they can speak the [English] language better than we do. It is true that this school is not conducted on such a scale as some, but there is no school in the United States, or any other place, in which, we can be educated without working for it ourselves, and there is no sum of money with which, we can pay for an education, without studying very hard.26

24 25 26

Jorge Noriega, “American Indian Education in the United States: Indoctrination for Subordination to Colonialism” in M. Annette Jaimes ed., The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 376. Felix Scott, “The Outlook for the Indian” 3/3/1902, AA65: Student Essays, pymic. Felix Scott, “The Outlook for the Indian” 3/3/1902, AA65: Student Essays, pymic.

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The conclusion provides an interesting student critique of the quality of the school, but places some of the blame at the feet of the students. Although student graduation speeches may have been featured at Tunesassa more than at other Indian boarding schools, the substance of the speech was similar to those at other schools. David Wallace Adams has said of commencement exercises: [S]uch carefully orchestrated ceremonies were designed to strengthen support for Indian education among white citizenry. But there was also a more profound purpose to commencement rituals: it was their last opportunity to impress upon graduates the deep meaning of their school experience. Two themes permeated commencement rhetoric: Indians had arrived in a state of savagism but now returned thoroughly civilized… . Second, commencement offered a ceremonially sanctified opportunity for passing on philosophical truisms and heartfelt advice … the travails ahead would be numerous. Only moral courage, stiff backbones, and right attitudes could carry the day.27 In Scott’s speech, we see those two themes strongly presented. How much the children’s writings were entirely the result of indoctrination and how much their own, willing acceptance of the education they received is difficult to discern. Views like Felix Scott’s met the approval well enough to be included in the public addresses by students to others but it is likely that after a decade at Tunesassa they reflected his or her own beliefs, too. The Quaker adults wrote similarly about the link between temperance, citizenship, and industry in their writings. In a 1908 statement from Joseph Elkinton, presumably read at a Philadelphia Friends Indian Committee Meeting, he made the explicit link between temperance and hard work on the farm. The conditions confronting the committee in charge of the School at Tunesassa are increasingly encouraging as the Indians on the reservation realize they must farm and refrain from intoxicating liquors. Some of their own people are very much interested to persuade their weaker brethren to refuse the use of such beverages. The improvement in the home-life of not a few indicates the uplifting effect of the influence exerted by Friends… . There is good material in the children at present attending the school and the commencement exercises were very creditable.

27

David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995), 274.

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He noted that the dairy was producing remarkably well, owing to the diligence of the students aided by some recent graduates. He reflected on the long term: “In reviewing the whole period during which our yearly meeting has tried to assist these natives the marked progress to be seen in many ways and in the face of many difficulties lends strength to the conviction that it would be wrong to stop to relax these efforts at present.” In words very close to those of the Indian children he predicted that “the day is doubtless approaching when these Indians must assume the duties of citizenship and nothing can fit them for such responsibilities and privileges than the [care?] and counsel that is in our power to extend through this institution.”28 The words and ideas behind the official speeches and correspondence do not tell the entire story. The regular activities of the temperance society were at least as important to shaping the lives of the children and to these we now turn. 4

Generational Connections: the Pierce Boys, the Loyal Temperance Legions, and Medal Contests

Not surprisingly, since they had been bringing them (or at least Edward) to the school since they were toddlers, the Pierces decided to send their children Alva and Edward to Tunesassa. Alva Manning Pierce entered the school at age ten in the winter of 1900. He left in the summer of 1901 for unknown reasons and re-enrolled in the winter of 1903–4. Fred and Lydia are listed as living in Irving, NY at the time. He married Asenath Bishop. Edward Newton Pierce entered at age ten, also, in the fall 1908. He left in the winter of 1909 after running away, apparently. By this time his parents were listed as living in Elko, NY (later destroyed by the Kinzua Dam project).29 He returned sometime around 1910, and subsequently appears in the records of the General Improvement Society. In 1903, Alva was listed as a member in the Minute Book of the General Improvement Society but does not appear to have been an officer or to have been particularly active in the group, though he did read an unnamed selection on May 20, 1904.30 Edward would be more involved. Except for the interlude 1903–6, when the organization became known as “The Athenian Literary Society” the groups’ activities continued largely unchanged. In 1908 Tunesassa Echoes announced the arrival of young Edward Pierce to the group. Edward 28 29 30

Statement of Joseph Elkinton, 4/14/1908, AA59, Friends’ Indian School (Tunesassa) Misc. Papers, 1828–1908, pymic. “Alva Pierce” AA47: 21, “Edward Perce” AA47:26, pymic. Minutes of the gis, AA61,

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was an active participant in the General Improvement Society, at least as long as he was enrolled at the school. On January 15, 1910 Edward Pierce performed a recitation at the meeting, “Slow but Sure.”31 On April 9, 1910 he recited, “The Stolen Nest.”32 At the meeting Lydia Pierce came to the meeting and “gave us an interesting talk.” On October 8, 1910 Edward read an unnamed essay.33 Aside from the recitations and declamations, members began most meetings by reciting the temperance pledge, (though in May 1909 it was decided only to recite the pledge at the start of the school year). Children who kept the pledge would, when asked as a group, raise their hand or shout out, “kept it!” Invariably it seemed that “most had kept the pledge” at any given meeting. Those who did not, however, were subjected to palpable public shame.34 When Edward left the school for good is not clear. While he was there the temperance club had been a family affair. Even after he departed, Lydia Pierce remained an active participant at Tunesassa for the next decade. As she rose through the ranks of the wctu in New York, reports of her activities made it to the national wctu press. In 1913, the Tunesassa wctu boasted “thirty members; has had eight public meetings and three medal contests, one being for a gold medal.”35 These medal contests were usually organized by the wctu’s Loyal Temperance Legions or ltls. ltls were common in Native and non-Native schools and were almost always supported by educational leadership. They helped bring boys and girls to the temperance struggle, but only the girls could ever become full members in the wctu when they got older. The medal contests were the ltls’ trademark. Consisting of oratorical contests in which young people gave speeches on the great social issues of the day, not just limited to temperance and prohibition topics, prizes were given depending on the age of the students and the sophistication of the speeches prepared. Contests could be “silver medal contests,” “gold medal contests,” or, rarely, “diamond medal contests.”36 Even in the broader white society the idea was that these boys would eventually take on the mantle of voting citizens in the republic—maybe even becoming elected officials. The women of the wctu, who could not yet vote, could influence the future leaders of the society through these educational means. Then, as adults, they would promote s­ uffrage and

31 32 33 34 35 36

gis Minutes, 1/15/1910, pymic. gis Minutes, 4/9/1910, pymic. gis minutes, 10/18/1910, pymic. gis minutes, 6/29/1894, 4/29/1904, 5/8/1909, pymic. WCTU-AMM, 1913, 211. WCTU-Union Signal, 2 July 1903, 15, Temperance and Prohibition Papers.

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t­ emperance. As the ltl motto went, “Tremble King Alcohol because we shall grow up.”37 Both in Native American communities and the broader white society the wctu sought to influence children as an essential strategy. At Tunesassa, with Lydia Pierce in such close proximity, the children had one of the nation’s foremost proponents of Scientific Temperance and a wctu organizer as a frequent guest speaker. Even before her children’s enrollment at the boarding school, she had been a part of developing at least three wctu chapters in the vicinity of Allegany: One at Tunesassa, one at Red House [the wctu’s Union Signal paper mistakenly called it Red Horse], and one on the Cornplanter tract to the south. All of the wctu officers worked together to organize six “silver medal contests” for children, both those enrolled in the boarding schools and those not enrolled.38 However, boarding school children were definitely involved. In 1910 the Six Nations Temperance League held their annual meeting October 4–7 at Allegany. Charles Doxon (Onondaga), president of the Temperance League and a Hampton Institute graduate himself, presided over the activities. There was a silver medal contest with eight girls involved. The winner was a Tunesassa student, “Lorene Neffew” who the wctu minutes described as, “a sweet voiced Indian maiden.”39 Lorene (spelled “Lorine” in the minutes) was a long-standing member of the General Improvement Society, giving a recitation, “No One Will See Me” as late as January 12, 1917.40 Though most of the Tunesassa participants were girls, boys were always involved. In fact, ltls and the medal contests echoed a Haudenosaunee tradition of future male leaders of the society being groomed and selected by the elder women. Clan mothers had long selected the men who would act as confederacy chiefs at Onondaga and were thus already accustomed to influencing the political system through the training of young men. Though the clan system and the Grand Council was operating independently of the wctu, the persistence of women’s influence on political leaders can be seen in this new introduction of the ltls.41 Among the Haudenosaunee, where oratorical skills 37

38 39 40 41

Sharon Anne Cook, “’Earnest Christian Women, Bent on Saving our Canadian Youth’: The Ontario Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and Scientific Temperance Instruction, 1881–1930.” Ontario History, 86 (1994): 249–267; Judith B. Erickson, “Making King Alcohol Tremble: The Juvenile Work of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 1874–1900,” International Journal of Suicide and Crisis Studies, 18 (1988): 333–352; Anna Adams Gordon, Juvenile Work Questions Answered (Chicago, IL, 1887). WCTU-AMM 1910, 210. WCTU-AMM 1910, 210. pymic, gis Minutes, 1/12/1917. Dean Snow, The Iroquois (Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1996), 168.

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were so valued, this was a way of connecting traditions of the children to the contemporary message of Christian temperance. Describing the long-standing importance of speaking skills in Haudenosaunee tradition, Mohawk author Taiaiake Alfred asserts, “In a culture deeply respectful of individual autonomy, the only real political power exists in the ability to persuade… . [T]he development of powerful oratorical abilities is imperative.”42 With the declamations, recitations, reading of the pledges not just at the meetings but at commencement and other ceremonies, these children were not only fulfilling a trait ­valued among Americans in the public arena, they were valued skills within Iroquois communities, too. The ltl and generational responsibility of women in Iroquois society was something that extended beyond just temperance instruction for Lydia. She became an advocate for the children at Tunesassa, in a more general way, too. One visitor from the Philadelphia Meeting wrote to William Rhoads thanking him for his hospitality while at Tunesassa. He indicated that as he prepared to leave the station, “Lydia Pierce referred me to a lad named Wilson Curry who has been with you until the middle of this year. She thought he had left [ran away] with the desire to earn money for clothing for himself and the younger children who are now with you.” The author suggested that Rhoads would know the circumstances of Wilson Curry better than he, but that if he was deserving, “I suppose the small fund in [the boys’ caretaker,] Henry Leeds’ hands for charitable purposes might be appropriate or if this is not sufficient or available in his judgment, I should be glad to know further particulars.” The author continued, admitting that “Of course there may be adverse circumstances in the case of which l.p. did not know or wish to recognize” [emphasis added]. The author did take a bit of a swipe at Pierce who, presumably, might have been trying to spoil the children by downplaying some presumed bad behavior on the part of William Curry. However, it is clear that “l.p.” was someone respected enough that the author encouraged the superintendent to seek her counsel. 5

Conclusion: Tunesassa Temperance Activity in Comparative Perspective

Tunesassa was never the typical Native American boarding school. Its control by the Society of Friends, its small, familiar size, and its proximity to the tribes it served all distinguished it from the larger, on and off-reservation 42

Taiaiake Alfred, Peace Power and Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 17.

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boarding schools throughout the rest of the country. It was also distinct from nearby schools. The Thomas Asylum for Orphaned and Destitute Children on nearby Cattaraugus Reservation was founded to house the most desperate cases. Even after it changed management, (to New York State Board of Charities in 1875), and changed names, (to The Thomas Indian School), in 1905, it never reached the academic standards of Tunesassa.43 This was intentional. It was clear that the Friends wanted to keep it as a training ground for future leaders. Although it was expensive to run and was often in financial danger, it had a host of supporters. In 1907 U.S. Indian Agent B.B. Weber wrote Rev. Harvey Wood of New York City. Apparently, Wood had been concerned about the illegal liquor trade to Native Americans in New York State and had heard that a special agent had been assigned to deal with the problem. Weber noted that “conditions here [are] wholly different from those in ‘the Indian Country.’” He lamented that laws against selling on the reservations were almost impossible to enforce and that they were violated constantly. However, there were fears that the Kansas claims money would come in and be squandered. He assured the reader that a lot of the money was spent on useful implements, building materials and such and that “only five Indians [were] arrested for drunkenness” during the week of the disbursements. Quaker Bridge (the proximity of Tunesassa) was, apparently, the site of a “jug trade” and a “Chicago house.” On balance, he was optimistic, noting, “there has been among the Senecas at least (except as above noted) a steady improvement not only as regards temperance, but in every respect.”44 The authorities were unable to find evidence against anyone, however. Despite the lack of legal changes, he seemed to be observing a marked trend toward “progress” and a decrease in alcohol abuse. Whether this was an erroneous impression is difficult to say definitively. Yet, something seemed to be going on and the various temperance efforts, which were anchored to a degree at the Tunesassa Boarding School, were part of that cultural shift. The hope for temperate Native American adults was not uniquely directed toward Tunesassa. The wctu’s national and local organizations targeted many other Indian schools around the country. While the scope of wctu outreach to other schools is outside of the realm of this work (and is indeed part of a larger project of the present author) a few comparisons will be instructive. The Minnesota wctu had an active Department of Work among Indians and they took special efforts to reach out to children. The state president, Bessie Laythe Scovell, travelled to Morris Indian School to address the students and distribute 43 Burich, Thomas Indian School,14. 44 B.B. Weber to Harvey Wood, 5/27/1907, AA41, pymic.

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literature. By 1905 the school also had an ltl.45 State organizers also reached out to Pine Point Indian School on White Earth Reservation in 1913, with some success. Both of these endeavors seemed to fizzle out rather rapidly and the extant state wctu records do not offer much of an Indian perspective. Wisconsin saw some of the most success for the wctu in Indian schools, in part because Wisconsin had an outstanding ltl Department. In the Brothertown community, the local wctu superintendent Mrs. Marion R. Barker, organized an ltl with thirty-eight members who were very active, even getting on the program of the state medal contest competitions in 1892. Apparently, transportation plans fell through preventing their participation. By 1896, Barker had moved away and the ltl became less active, (or at least less visible to the state reporters).46 While state and national wctu records provide large-scale overviews of boarding school activities, there is not much texture to the daily activities provided. It is tempting to assert that the rich life of the Tunesassa Temperance clubs, which spanned the generations, were unique to the place. Evidence does suggest that Tunesassa was particularly successful in its temperance activities. Unitarian minister Samuel A. Eliot’s essay on the future of Tunesassa spoke admirably of the work that had been done there, but emphasized the need to make it distinctive: “I should like to see Tunesassa a school which does not repeat or duplicate teaching which can be done just as well in the day schools on the reservation or in the public schools of the neighboring communities, but a school doing something distinctive, taking the most promising Indian boys and girls and giving them the training, mental, moral and spiritual which they are not likely to get except in a boarding school under the right conditions and in an atmosphere that the Friends know how to provide.” With Carlisle closed and Western U.S. boarding schools prohibiting Iroquois students, the need to keep Tunesassa unique was all the more pressing.47 From what the students were producing in their temperance organizations, it seems that Tunesassa was doing some things that were, indeed, distinctive. Although assimilation, language loss, and the breakup of tribal property were all part of the program at Tunesassa, the students’ connections with home and their parents along with their ability to participate in a genuine literary and intellectual club helped make it different. 45

Minnesota wctu Annual Report, 1904, 65–6, wctu Collection, Minnesota Historical Society; Minnesota wctu Annual Report, 1905, 70; Minnesota wctu Annual Report, 1914, 62. 46 “Wisconsin ltl Convention Program,” 1892, 5, ltl Collection, Box 2, Wisconsin Historical Society; “Wisconsin ltl Report,” 1896, ltl Collection, Box 2, Wisconsin Historical Society. 47 Samuel A. Elliot, “Tunesassa Indian School,” n.d. ca. 1921, AA59, pymic.

Chapter 10

Of African and Indian Descent: Creating Mission and Memory in Western Ohio, 1805–1850 Tara Strauch* In 1839, Doctor Craig Goings was born in Rumley, Shelby County, Ohio. d.c., as he was known, was a doctor who practiced faith healing across Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania throughout the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s he settled in Washington Township, Paulding County, a rural black community in western Ohio where he became an established member of the community.1 When he was interviewed by a neighbor who was writing a local history, d.c. was clear about several pieces of his family history and heritage; he was an educated man from a well-bred family and both he and his wife’s families were not only black, they were Native Americans.2 Goings was not the only member of the local black community to claim such heritage. Nor was he unusual for his era; he joined countless other black men and women who tried to gain social status by distancing themselves from slavery and African heritage.3 In asserting his family’s mixed race heritage, however, Goings tapped into the history of both the local black and white communities. Both of these groups remembered longstanding relationships between people of color and white religious, particularly Quaker, communities rooted in mission work with Native Americans.4 Moreover, Goings and other

* I would like to thank the volunteers at both the Logan County Historical Society and the Logan County Genealogical Society for their help and Centre College for the summer funds to visit small, local archives. 1 Confusingly, D.C.’s given name was Doctor. His occupation as a faith healer meant he was often referred to as Dr. D.C. Goings. He served as a township trustee at least once, in 1884. He was a Mason and an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 2 Laurence R Hipp, History of Grover Hill (Latty and Washington Townships of Paulding County, Ohio) (Grover Hill, Ohio: publisher not identified, 1971), 295–296. Goings asserted that his father was a “Wapoo” Indian and his mother part Irish while his wife was also the daughter of a “full-blooded Indian.” 3 William Loren Katz, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage, 1st ed. (New York: Atheneum, 1986). 4 This mission included interactions with the natives at Lewistown, Wapakoneta, and Upper Sandusky. See for example, Stephen Warren, The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795–1870 (University of Illinois Press, 2008) and James B Finley, Heye Foundation Museum of the

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_011

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local people of color pointed to their status as historically free as proof of their mixed race heritage. Goings’s family had been in Ohio since at least the 1820s and relatives had lived in the state since its inception. Alongside Quakers who had immigrated at the same time, Goings’s community had created a space for the mixed race community to aid recently freed slaves. In 1837, d.c.’s father and uncle, Joel, and Wesley Goings, platted the town of Rumley in Shelby County, Ohio. Rumley would become a center for recently freed slaves and historically free people of color in the antebellum period. It was not the only village in the region where free black families could live as farmers, carpenters, and practice other rural trades but it was distinctive because it was platted by free people of color for people of color. Rumley was one product of twenty five years of missionary work in western Ohio to free people of color and Native Americans by white Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians, and other denominations. Yet, Rumley was not the only product. At the same time Rumley was laid out, Augustus Wattles, Quaker, abolitionist, and communitarian, was organizing a manual labor school for black and native boys in Carthagena Ohio, only fifteen miles away. Out of Wattles initial efforts would come the Emlen Institution for the Benefit of the children of African and Indian descent. These communities, both white and black, along with other mixed race communities in Urbana, Springfield, and Darke County Ohio were separated by less than fifty miles and connected by family, religious, and ethnic ties. Most of these ties were rooted in Logan County, Ohio which lay at the center of many of these missionary works and communities. Logan County’s population, included Quakers and free people of color who had moved en masse from North Carolina after the War of 1812. By 1840, over 400 people of color were living in Logan County, more than in any surrounding county. Several of the established and prosperous black members of the community had been in Logan County since the 1810s. It was this community of historically free people of color who supplied people, ideas, and proof to the Goings brothers, Augustus Wattles, and their benefactors that these towns and educational efforts could succeed. Located on the edge of Greenville’s treaty line, Logan County had been home to Quakers as early as 1801 when Job Sharp moved to the frontier from Virginia. Bordered by swampy land to the north and west, Logan County remained fairly isolated until the 1850s. The Quaker community in the county, American Indian, and Huntington Free Library, History of the Wyandott Mission, at Upper Sandusky, Ohio, under the Direction of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Cincinnati: Pub. by J.F. Wright and L. Swormstedt, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1840).

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however, quickly proliferated and found ample opportunity to provide aid to nearby native reservations at Wapakoneta and Lewistown. Logan County was, in many ways, the entry point to Indian Country in Ohio—Seneca and Shawnee lived in the county until 1831 with Shawnee also living in nearby Wapakoneta and Wyandots and others living fifty miles north at Upper Sandusky. In addition to trading and ministering to the nearby native groups, Logan County Quakers opened their community to free men of color from Virginia and North Carolina. Anthony Banks and Kinchen Artis were established in the community before the 1820 census, settling around the Marmon family who had moved from Northampton County, North Carolina in 1815. By 1830, free people of color made up a significant minority of the population of the county. These people were overwhelmingly historically free families of mixed race descent from the same southern communities as many of the Quaker families. Families like the Dempseys, Artises, Newsoms, and Turners, were quick to point out that they were from historically mixed race families and were also careful to document their historically free status in Virginia and North Carolina. Between 1815 and 1850, these families, both Quaker and mixed race, supported one another’s businesses, lived as neighbors, and transformed the mostly unimproved woodland forest into a patchwork of farms and towns.5 The Quaker communities protected mixed-race transplants from unruly neighbors and race laws, until fractured by internal struggles such as the Hicksite schism and by the forced westward migration of Great Lakes natives, the Logan County Quaker community ebbed as the nineteenth century progressed. This paper examines the mixed race community of Logan County and suggests that the relationship between this group and the Quaker community was mutually beneficial; the Quakers provided a safe space for the mixed race community to live in while the mixed race community allowed Quakers to express their religious obligation to provide mission and aid to both native groups and African Americans.6 For Quaker immigrants to Logan County this was an 5 Shannon Bontrager’s work on the physical, political, and religious boundaries between native and white in Ohio is a fruitful model for the way in which Logan County operated in the first half of the nineteenth century. While Quakers and the mixed race communities of the county certainly had a relationship, they were not equal partners in the “civilizing” of the land. Nor were their goals the same; although they were often complimentary. Shannon Bontrager, “‘From a Nation of Drunkards, We Have Become a Sober People’: The Wyandot Experience in the Ohio Valley during the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 32, no. 4 (2012): 603–32. 6 I am using the term “mixed race community” to denote both the interracial relationships between Quakers and people of color as well as to emphasize that both people of color and the Quaker community recognized the multiracial heritage of these people of color.

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extension of their mission work in their former southern communities; they had lived and missioned among these same individuals in Virginia and North Carolina. By the 1840s, Logan County’s mixed race community began to embrace their own sense of mission as they worked alongside other mixed race individuals to participate in Augustus Wattles school and to create rural communities like Rumley for former slaves and historically free people of color alike. As Quakers in Logan County began to move west and the integrity of that religious community crumbled under the pressures of internal schism, Rumley became both a product of and a corrective to Quaker mission among free African Americans; it extended the impulse to protect and educate racial minorities but looked to improve on white Quaker efforts by creating a purposefully colored community. There is a growing body of scholarship on people of color in the antebellum rural north; scholars have increasingly emphasized the presence of these individuals and communities throughout the Old Northwest and the ways in which they struggled for respectability with their white neighbors.7 There is also new and exciting work on the intersection between the black and native communities. Sakina Hughes recent article on John Stewart’s mission to the Wyandot argues in part that Stewart’s missionary work represented how some African Americans had embraced western ideals of civility and respectability and used mission work to the natives to demonstrate the black community’s ability to be “true Americans.”8 This framework is especially useful for this paper because I argue that the Logan County mixed race community then used this same framework on former slaves. Joan Cashin’s article on the Midwestern black family in the antebellum period also sets out the way issues of respectability shaped the black communities attitude towards white communities and freed slaves.9

7 Many of these works focus on communities along the Ohio River in Indiana and Illinois and others on communities like Cass County, Michigan. Relatively few works focus on Ohio’s rural people of color in part because these communities were smaller and more transient. Stephen A. Vincent, Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765–1900, Midwestern History and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance, (University of Illinois Press, 2013.) 8 Sakina M. Hughes, “The Community Became an Almost Civilized and Christian One: John Stewart’s Mission to the Wyandots and Religious Colonialism as African American Racial Uplift,” Native American and Indigenous Studies 3, no. 1 (2016): 24–45, doi:10.5749/ natiindistudj.3.1.0024. 9 Joan E. Cashin, “Black Families in the Old Northwest,” Journal of the Early Republic 15, no. 3 (1995): 449–75.

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The Migration

In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Logan County was populated by natives, traders, and their families. In fact, in 1805 when the Marmon family of Northampton County, North Carolina first went to explore Ohio country, they visited with Isaac Zane and his mixed race family.10 Zane had been captured by the Wyandot as a boy and raised in part among them. His wife, Myeerah, or White Crane, was also Wyandot. Their home in Logan County was an active site of cultural and economic exchange and their children became respected members of Logan County’s white community.11 Zane himself was descended from a Quaker family and he and other Quaker sympathizers, like the indian agent John Johnson, were scattered throughout western Ohio. These individuals had ready relationships with natives and were disposed to encourage Quakers to interact with the remaining native communities. The Marmon family was originally concerned about the local presence of natives, although Zane seems to have dispelled the Marmon family’s concerns. Despite the presence of “numerous” natives, the Marmon brothers Martin and Samuel found the land along the Mad River promising.12 One reason that they were interested in this section of the Northwest was that there were already six families of Quakers located north of Xenia.13 The land was also relatively cheap and located in what promised to remain an agricultural area. For the Marmons, who were currently living on the edge of the swampy land surrounding the Great Dismal Swamp, Logan County offered the potential for a more prosperous rural existence. The swamps along the eastern Virginia/North Carolina border were poor ground for farming; the swamps were better known as a home to maroons than as a place for reputable white farmers. For the Marmon family to expand and succeed as a farming family they would need access to better land and a more robust network of fellow Quakers. The presence of other Quakers was important as the Marmon family began to consider leaving the Meeting they had formed in 1771, the Jack Swamp Meeting. In addition to the economic benefits the north offered, like many Southern Quakers at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Marmon family was looking to move out of the south and into the states created out of the 10

Typescript copy of the foolscap journal of Martin Marmon, Logan County Historical Society. 11 For the most concise history of this family see Charles Milton Lewis Wiseman, Pioneer Period and Pioneer People of Fairfield County, Ohio (Walsworth Publishing Company, 1901), 15–20. 12 Journal of Martin Marmon. 13 Ibid.

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Northwest Territories to escape the difficulties of living as a part of an abolitionist faith in a land of slavery.14 The local and monthly meetings in North Carolina and other southern states routinely disciplined members for engaging in slave owning which in turn made it difficult for Friends to participate in the local economy in the same way as their non-Quaker neighbors.15 Moving to a state that had abolished slavery and living near fellow Friends would provide the Marmon family with two foundations for their religious and economic prosperity. The Marmon brothers returned to Northampton County and began to organize their families to move west. They migrated to Logan County between 1806 and 1808 when over seven Marmon households as well as three other related Quaker families, the Reames, Outlands, and Stanleys were recorded in the area. By 1811, an active monthly meeting, the Darby Creek Meeting, had been set apart from the Miami Monthly Meeting and other southern Quakers began to move into the area. Eventually, the Goshen Monthly Meeting was set apart from the Darby Creek Meeting. The Goshen Meeting met in Zanesfield only a few miles from the so-called “Marmon Valley” that the original family had settled. As good Quakers, the community supported anti-slavery efforts including starting an anti-slavery society in 1825. They are also historically connected to the Underground Railroad along with many members of the larger mixed race community.16 At the same time as the Marmon emigration, historically free families of color were also moving from Northampton County and many of them moved to Logan County as well. By 1820, there were several men of color living among the Quakers in Jefferson Township, Logan County, Ohio. Several of these men also came directly from Northampton County, North Carolina and, before that, from Southampton County Virginia. As local histories relate, people of color bought and rented land from Quakers although the men who sold land to the Quakers, Isaac Zane for one, were still acting as land agents in the area. These 14 15

16

This argument is classically laid out by Stephen Weeks; Stephen Beauregard Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery: A Study in Institutional History (Johns Hopkins Press, 1896). For example, the Rich Square Preparatory Meeting which included some members of the Marmon family disowned Thomas Outland for slave-owning in 1793. A History of the Rich Square Monthly Meeting, http://ncymc.org/richsquare/history1760-1960.pdf. On the economic consequences of their theological tenets see A. Glenn Crothers, Quakers Living in the Lion’s Mouth: The Society of Friends in Northern Virginia, 1730–1865 (University Press of Florida, 2012). O.L. Baskin, History of Logan County and Ohio: Containing a History of the State of Ohio, from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time … a History of Logan County, Giving an Account of Its Aboriginal Inhabitants … Biographical Sketches, Portraits of Some of the Early Settlers and Prominent Men, Etc (O.L. Baskin, 1880), pg. 475.

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families also specifically chose to come to Logan County despite the presence of other nearby black communities in Xenia and Urbana as well as more rural settlements in Highland County and other southern Ohio locations. Instead, these families chose to live exclusively in Jefferson, and eventually Monroe, townships which was home to the core population of Quakers also from Northampton County. The Goshen Monthly Meeting continued many relationships with free people of color from their neighborhoods in the south. As members of the Jack Swamp Monthly Meeting in North Carolina, the Marmons, Outlands, and Reames were accustomed to reporting on slaveholding activities and caring for former slaves left to the meeting’s oversight when owners moved west. The North Carolina Yearly Meeting had made a committee to consider the concerns of such people of color and in response the Jack Swamp meeting regularly reported on their progress ridding themselves of slaves and supporting those former slaves remaining in their care and employment.17 Jack Swamp was located in an area that had both a large percentage of free people of color and that was home to several of the small remaining native communities along the Atlantic seaboard. In fact, many people listed as “free people of color” in census records and tax lists had relatives living on the Nottaway reservation as “Indians.”18 To the south, some remnants of the Tuscarora continued to live in neighboring Bertie County. For Quakers living in Northampton County, many people of color including those who migrated with them to Ohio, were mixed race. At the same time that this mixed race community was developing in Ohio, the United States was forcing local native populations onto reservations and further west.19 Yet, both Quaker and non-Quaker community members continued to visit and trade with natives and to support local missions to native 17

18

19

See the Minutes of the Jack Swamp Meeting. Northampton County Society of Friends. Jack Swamp Monthly Meeting (Jack Swamp North Carolina), Minutes, (Raleigh, North Carolina: Filmed by the North Carolina Dept. of Archives and History, 1961). There is relatively little discussion of slaves in these minutes and almost no unhappiness about the treatment of black servants. This is different than in neighboring Rich Square where there were more discussion about how to handle slavery and manumission. Lewis R. Binford, “An Ethnohistory of the Nottoway, Meherrin and Weanock Indians of Southeastern Virginia,” Ethnohistory 14, no. 3/4 (1967): 103–218, especially 107 and Helen C. Rountree, “The Termination and Dispersal of the Nottoway Indians of Virginia,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 95, no. 2 (1987): 193–214, especially 197–198. By the 1818 treaty of Saint Mary’s the only territory reserved for natives was at Wapakoneta, Hogs Creek, Lewistown, Upper Sandusky, and the reservations along the Maumee River. See Helen Hornbeck Tanner and Miklos Pinther, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman: Published for the Newberry Library by the University of Oklahoma Press, 1987).

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c­ ommunities. The Goshen Monthly Meeting, then, engaged in aid to both Africans and natives as they traded with the villages at Lewistown, Wapakoneta, and Upper Sandusky, as well as when they welcomed people of color into their community. This engagement was consistent with their experiences in eastern North Carolina and their understanding of Quaker Yearly Meeting guidelines. It did, however, set them apart from Quakers who had emigrated from other, more northern locations as well as from the Quaker missionaries who lived at Wapakoneta, and other native missions. 2

Kinchen Artis

Kinchin Artis is an especially good example of the way in which Quakers and people of color cooperated in Logan County. He was born in Northampton County in 1790 to free parents, George and Mary Artis. George had lived in Virginia before moving to North Carolina and was from a family that had been freed by John Fulcher in his contentious 1712 will.20 Mary Artis was the daughter of Moses and Winnifred (Walden) Newsom. The Newsom family had long been classified as family of “other free” in both Virginia and North Carolina— the product of a white father and mixed race mother. Northampton County had a comparatively large population of free people of color, many of whom, like the Artis family, had moved slowly south and east from Virginia during the eighteenth century. This migration pattern was strikingly similar to the pattern that Virginian Quakers like the Marmon family were also making during the eighteenth century. The Artis family had been freed in 1712 in Norfolk County, Virginia but by the 1720s and 1730s were living in Southampton County, Virginia and by the 1750s were living just to the south in Northampton County, North Carolina—the future site of Nat Turner’s rebellion.21 For the extended Marmon family and Kinchin Artis’ extended family these counties provided opportunities to own land but the region was economically depressed. In a world of small yeoman farmers and a relatively thin population density it seems likely that these extended families had longstanding relationships or at least knew of each other before they left the east for Ohio.

20 21

See the introduction to Paul Heinegg’s Free African Americans. http://freeafricanamericans.com/introduction.htm. Patrick H. Breen, The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt, 1st edition (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015).

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Kinchen and his brother, Collin, fought in the War of 1812 as members of the 3rd Northampton Regiment. The regiment, like the county, was mixed race with Kinchen and his brother fighting alongside fellow free people of color as well as white men. Sometime between the end of the war and the 1820 census, Kinchen moved to Logan County, Ohio. He came with a wife, Tabitha, and six young children and would remain in the county until after 1840. He and his family clearly interacted with the local white community—his son James boarded with a local Presbyterian family to attend school in the 1830s and Kinchen is remembered as one of the earliest settlers in the county.22 Strikingly, Kinchen and Tabitha appear to be among the first members of the Goshen Preparatory (and eventually Monthly) meeting of Friends. In the membership rolls, both husband and wife are recorded as full members of the church along with their children born to them in Logan County, Tabitha, Newsom, and Catherine.23 As members of the Goshen Monthly Meeting they would have interacted regularly with their fellow friends; the Marmons, Outlands, Reams, Stantons and others. They would have also been engaged in an international religious denomination with a stated goal of anti-slavery and abolition. Midwestern Quakers were active agents for the anti-slavery movement and within the Logan County Quaker population there were many active abolitionists.24 The Artis family is among a very few examples of black full members of the Quaker denomination. Stories about black Quakers are rare enough that many scholars have questioned why there were so few and what to make of the few stories we have.25 Kinchen and Tabitha do not appear to have been full members in Northampton County as they do not appear in the rolls of either 22 23 24

25

History of Logan County, 410. “A Record of the Members of the Goshen Monthly Meeting Commenced in 1825” Typscript Copy held by the Logan County Historical Society. Logan County was home to a sizable radical Hicksite population and had an active ­anti-slavery society. They were also overwhelmingly southern Quakers who had left their southern homes in part because of moral objections to slavery. For a detailed analysis of Midwestern Quakers see, Thomas D. Hamm et al., “‘A Great and Good People’ Midwestern Quakers and the Struggle Against Slavery,” Indiana Magazine of History 100, no. 1 (2004): 3–25. Linda Sellack’s work on Quaker attitudes towards race during and after the Civil War argues in part that Quaker reluctance to accept black members was mirrored by its resistance to seek new converts out of new immigrant populations. Linda. Selleck, Gentle Invaders: Quaker Women Educators and Racial Issues during the Civil War and Reconstruction (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1995). Ryan Jordan’s article on Hicksite “comeouters” also emphasizes the inability of most Quakers to imagine black members of the church. Ryan Jordan, “Quakers, ‘Comeouters,’ and the Meaning of Abolitionism in the Antebellum Free States,” Journal of the Early Republic 24, no. 4 (2004): 587–608.

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the Jack Swamp or the Rich Square meetings. Yet, their move to Logan County alongside other migrants from Northampton and their admittance to the membership rolls suggests that the Northampton Quakers knew the couple or were able to obtain assurances of their faithfulness. Moreover, as members they would have had a duty to engage economically with their fellow Friends and to evaluate and be evaluated by those peers. Like many early migrants to Logan County, Ohio was not Artis’ last home. He began leasing some of his land to William Byrd, a fellow person of color, in 1835.26 By 1850 he had moved to Cass County, Michigan with a second wife, Sidney Stewart, and had joined by certificate the Birch Lake Monthly Meeting.27 Cass County was a destination for many individuals in Logan County both white and black; at least two Marmon families moved to Cass County in the 1840s and 1850s along with other free people of color from the region.28 In transferring to a new meeting, Kinchen would have had to present a certificate of satisfactory membership as well as submit to being visited and assessed by his new meeting. It is unlikely then that his Quaker affiliation was an artifice of some kind used in Logan County for his protection or economic security. 3

Henry Newsom

Kinchen Artis was not the only man of color to move to Logan County before 1820. His cousin, Henry Newsom and his extended family also came to the county early; some accounts place him in the county as early as 1806 while others place the date after the War of 1812 like Artis.29 Kinchen and Henry were cousins through their mothers and together brought a large kinship network to the county. Unlike Artis, Newsom did not appear on the Quaker rolls nor did he participate in the War of 1812. But, Henry did buy land from the Marmon family and established himself in close proximity to the Marmon families and his cousin Kinchen.30 When John Taylor and Aaron Brown, also Quakers, moved 26 27

Baskin, 666. Also note that in a visit to Cass County in 1858, one year before Kinchin’s death, Robert and Sarah Lindsay recorded the presence of a colored man among the Quakers at the Birch Lake meeting. See, Thomas D. Hamm et al., “‘A Great and Good People’ Midwestern Quakers and the Struggle Against Slavery,” Indiana Magazine of History 100, no. 1 (2004): 22. 28 Marmon Family History, Logan County Historical Society. 29 Baskin, 400. 30 In A Bicentennial Issue of Black History of Logan County, it is stated that Henry Newsom bought 105 acres from Robert Marmon out of V.M.S. 3216.

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to the Marmon Valley from Northampton County, they bought land next to Newsome, surrounding both Newsom and Artis with Quaker neighbors from Northampton County.31 In 1854, Newsom’s family petitioned to have the land he had bequeathed to them partitioned into logical sections. The petition is useful for identifying family connections but is also enlightening about the community connections between native groups and the mixed race community in Logan County. One of Newsom’s nieces, Lavina Whetsell, lived with her husband, Felix, in Seneca County, Ohio—within the land deeded to the Upper Sandusky groups until 1843. Seneca County had very few people of color in the 1840s, but was still home to the mixed race families associated with the mission at Upper Sandusky. In addition, the Whetsell family lived not far from the settlement of Negrotown, a multiracial community that had been associated with the Wyandots at Upper Sandusky for over fifty years.32 Henry was not surrounded by Quakers who were tepid in their antislavery sentiments. In the 1854 petition for the partition of his lands, he is noted as sharing a property boundary with Aaron Brown, a radical utopian Quaker. Brown was fundamental in the creation of the Highland Home community in 1844 and an active participant in county anti-slavery efforts.33 Surrounded by the Marmon family, Kinchin Artis, and the Brown family, Newsom was physically insulated from non-sectarians who supported slavery but he was not free from the racism that was inherent even in Quaker philosophy. Henry used Joshua Marmon, a member of the Quaker Marmon family and a lawyer, for most of his legal dealings. Marmon challenged the partition of Henry’s property by arguing against using the witness testimony of Henry’s sister because, “Henry Newsom and his sister Chloe Rann are negroes or Mulattoes having more negro than White blood.”34 Despite the aid the local Quaker community 31 32

33

34

History of Logan County, 401. Henry Newsom Petition, Logan County Probate Office, On file at the Logan County Historical Society. Seneca County was home to 65 people of color according to the 1840 ­census and 151 in the 1850 census. The increase is likely due in part to the removal of the reservation at Upper Sandusky. For more on Negrotown and its connection to the Wyandots see Sakina M. Hughes, “The Community Became an Almost Civilized and Christian One: John Stewart’s Mission to the Wyandots and Religious Colonialism as African American Racial Uplift,” Native American and Indigenous Studies 3, no. 1 (2016): 24–45. Highland Home was the sister community to Prairie Home located only a few miles away. Prairie Home was headed in part by Horton Brown, Aaron’s son, who was an ardent abolitionist as well as communitarian. Thomas D. Hamm, and Reform Society for Universal Inquiry, God’s Government Begun: The Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, 1842–1846, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.) Logan County Supreme Court, July Term, 1846, 238–40, 245, 254.

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provided to free people of color, the long-standing relationship between the Marmon family and the extended Newsom family, and the demonstrations by Newsom and others that they were more than “negroes,” Marmon was willing to use Henry’s perceived race to win a legal battle. The extended Artis-Newsom families were not the only people of color to move into Logan County. The Byrd family had moved to Logan County by 1830 as well with many members of the family continuing on to Cass County by 1850.35 The Jesse Dempsey family, which included both minor and adult children on their own land, moved from Northampton County to Logan County before 1840. Sterling Haithcock brought his extended family to Logan County by 1850. Closely related to the Artis and Newsom families, the Haithcock family also established homes in and around the Marmon valley. The Day family moved from Southampton County to Logan County ­before 1840 as well and due to Solomon Day Jr.’s importance as a black educator in ­Dayton city schools has left a more popular memory behind. In an 1882 history of Montgomery County his family was remembered as, “By the fortunate accident of having sprung—on his mother’s side—from one of the f.f.v.’s— though his father was a negro slave—he was “free born”. Ann Barnell, the ­mother of the subject of this sketch, was born near Little York, Penn., in the year 1801, and was of Quaker origin, her mother Ann Packer, belonging to the numerous Packer family of Quakers which has figured so largely in the past history of that State.”36 While the veracity of this story is doubtful, the available census and tax lists do not support the argument, the story shows the long and intertwined history of mixed race and Quaker communities in Southside Virginia and Logan County. In addition to their land transactions and religious ties with their local black community, Logan County Quakers seem to have taken an early interest in aiding former slaves. They had followed Quaker obligations to remove themselves from buying and selling slaves in North Carolina and by 1833 were actively engaged in removing former slaves from the region. A Logan County report states that in 1833, Robert and Reubin Hix were hired to remove several slaves belonging to Robert Ellis from North Carolina to Ohio. Three slaves, presumably a family, were then located on Joshua Marmon’s farm.37 While I cannot determine if these former slaves remained in the county for long, it is 35 36 37

Turner Byrd was recorded in the 1830 census in Logan County and had bought land in Cass County by 1850. He went on to become a noted Baptist minister in the region and a founder of the Chain Lake Baptist Church in Cass County. The History of Montgomery County, Ohio, Containing a History of the County (W.H. Beers & Company, 1882), Vol. 3, 202–203. Family Files, Logan County Historical Society.

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i­ nteresting to note that other Quakers similarly harbored former, but not necessarily escaped, slaves. For example, in the 1840 census Mahlon Pickerell had two people of color in his household, one teenage girl and one teenage boy. Henry W. Marmon also housed people of color. The register of free people of color in Logan County is another source of information about how Quakers sought to aid newly freed slaves. The register is tricky, some historically free families are registered and others are not, the records are haphazard with some families producing certificates of freedom well after their move to Logan County.38 What is clear is that several slave owners relocated freed slaves to Logan County through Quaker intermediaries. One example is that of the Ellis slaves given above but other families, including the Newlins, Mendenhalls, Woodleys, Irwins, Haynives, Carters, and Burnetts, also came to the area. Some Quakers were even listed as the guardians. For example, Joshua Marmon and Asa Williams, both members of the Goshen Meeting of Friends, were listed as guardians of the Mendenhall slaves when they arrived in Logan County in the 1850s.39 The Logan County mixed race community was a product of white Quaker goals to create successful rural communities outside the slave south, historically free mixed race families who sought an escape from increasingly restrictive laws governing free people of color, and the unique heritage that bound these two groups together. While these mixed race settlers were part of Quaker conceptions of mission and aid to Africans, they also occupied marginal positions in society alongside or sometimes in place of Native Americans. As Quakers sought out more overt missionary roles to freed slaves and Native Americans so too did the mixed race community. 4

Religion, Mission Work, and Indian Removal

By the 1820s, settlers were demanding the land reserved for natives in Ohio while natives were struggling to survive on ever smaller plots of land. Removal was not a uniformly welcomed political event, however, and for settlers who lived alongside these native communities it presented a conundrum. 38

39

As Ellen Eslinger notes, these certificates could be produced years after an immigrant moved into the state. In the case of Logan County it isn’t until large numbers of nonQuakers began occupying public offices that many individuals recorded their historically free status. Ellen Eslinger, “The Evolution of Racial Politics in Early Ohio,” in The Center of a Great Empire; The Ohio Country in the Early American Republic, (Athens, OH; Ohio University Press, 2005) 88–89. List of Freedom Certificates, Logan County Historical Society.

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­ avid  Robb, a Logan County newspaper editor, laid the problem out nicely. D He wrote a lengthy editorial in his August 21, 1830 edition of the Bellefontaine Republican and Logan Register. A Methodist Episcopal camp meeting had been held a few weeks prior in the county and this alongside President Jackson’s demand for removal gave Robb, who had been among the various Ohio tribes as a part of the removal proceedings, the opportunity to express the importance of relationships between white settlers and native groups. “It will be admitted by all Christian people,” he opined, “that civilization and moral instruction must proceed Christianity…”40 Such civilization and instruction was exactly what he saw happening amongst the Ohio reservations in the nineteenth century. Both the Quaker mission at Wapakoneta and the Methodist mission at Upper Sandusky had won native converts and taught these natives so-called civilized agricultural skills that made them, according to the theory, more open to Christianity. Robb needed no greater proof of the force of this civilization than Logan County’s recent camp meeting where “there were about 40 or 50 Wyandotts in attendance.”41 These natives had traveled fifty miles for the opportunity to worship alongside their white brethren and had behaved themselves with all the devotion and emotion expected at a camp meeting. For Robb, the conclusions were clear, Logan County whites, both Quaker and Methodist, were doing their part to civilize and Christianize natives—in other words they were doing their Christian duty to participate in mission. For Logan County Quakers these camp meetings were a success. As many scholars have observed, Quakers were not concerned that Natives become Quakers. Rather, they wanted and encouraged natives to become Baptists and Methodists; emotional religions that were more in line with what Quakers expected from newly civilized peoples. Similarly, they also encouraged black communities to develop robust Baptist and Methodist organizations. Thus, native attendance at the local camp meeting, which was also populated by Logan County’s community of color, was a victory for the local Quaker community.42 When the Wapakoneta, Hogs Creek and Lewistown reservations were ­finally removed from Ohio in 1832, they left an extended community behind. John Shelby, one of the agents appointed to move the natives, kept a journal of the journey. In their first days of the trip, the natives were met repeatedly by white and black neighbors who came to talk, trade, and bid them farewell. 40 “Indian Affairs,” Bellefontaine Republican and Logan Register, August. 21, 1830. 41 Ibid. 42 Ryan Jordan, “Quakers, ‘Comeouters,’ and the Meaning of Abolitionism in the Antebellum Free States,” Journal of the Early Republic 24, no. 4 (2004): 598–600.

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Shelby notes that at West Liberty, in Logan County, “There was ever age from infant at breast to hoary age male and female and of every hue from white to as black as jet.…”43 These people were compelled to leave the natives alone so they could set up their camps but Shelby, who was often conflicted about his role in the removal, indicated that the throng was welcome by the natives as friends. In this way, we can see how the native population, Quakers, and people of color were more than trading neighbors. They were a frontier community despite the superiority Quakers might have claimed for themselves. The Logan County mixed race community could claim special status in converting and engaging with natives and did so especially in their oral history. According to several sources, the mixed race Methodist missionary, John Stewart, married a Logan County woman from the community of color.44 Exactly who she was is unclear, but as he likely married her in between 1818 and 1822 she may have been an Artis or Newsom daughter. This marriage made visible the bonds that already connected the native community to the Logan County community of color as well as their associated Quaker neighbors. 5

The Emlen Institute and August Wattles

During the late 1830s, abolitionist, radical, and reformer Augustus Wattles decided to establish a manual labor school for Ohio’s black population away from the prejudice and violence of Cincinnati where he had been teaching black youth for the past few years. In 1836, he decided to purchase land in Mercer County, Ohio, a rural county with cheap farmland and relatively few other settlers. Mercer County, like Logan, sat at the limits of Ohio’s settled land along the Greenville Treaty Line and was less than fifty miles from several well-­established Quaker communities. As a former Quaker himself, Augustus hoped to draw on the Quaker community for aid. He travelled around to 43 44

mms 1730 John Shelby, Bowling Green State University, Special Collections, page 11. “Mitchell, Joseph. The Missionary Pioneer, or A Brief Memoir of the Life, Labours, and Death of John Stewart, (Man of Colour,) Founder, under God of the Mission among the Wyandotts at Upper Sandusky, Ohio.,”(New York; J.C. Totten) 1827, pgs. 92–93, http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/mitchell/mitchell.html. Finley places the date of their marriage in 1820 and says that his wife was a colored woman from around Urbana. As Zanesfield is on the Urbana road it seems likely that this is where the wife had been living. James B Finley, Heye Foundation Museum of the American Indian, and Huntington Free Library, History of the Wyandott Mission, at Upper Sandusky, Ohio, under the Direction of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Cincinnati: Pub. by J.F. Wright and L. Swormstedt, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1840), 144.

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v­ arious Quaker and black communities attempting to raise money and recruits for his new pursuit.45 Logan County was one region he hoped would support his endeavor. Augustus worked in close connection with his brother, John Otis Wattles, who was instrumental in setting up the Prairie Home and Highland Home Communities in Logan County. Both Augustus and John Otis had been among the Logan County Quakers and presumably the community of color as well speaking at anti-slavery meetings and advocating for the creation of communitarian societies. As one of the closest Quaker communities, they expected Logan County to furnish money and support for the black school in Mercer County. In his 1841 report on Wattles’ school for the executors of Samuel Emlen’s will, Thomas Wistar traveled to Mercer County and observed the school and surrounding community. Logan County’s community was the first nearby community of color that he compared with the Mercer County school. “There is a large settlement at Zanesfield, in Logan County. One of the blacks owns one of the best farms and is reputed to be one of the best farmers in the county,” Wistar observed.46 The Logan County community was a model and a draw for locating the Emlen Institution in Western Ohio. It also pointed towards the success the Logan County Quakers had had in creating an intentionally mixed race community with relatively little violence; another important consideration for the trustees. We have little detail on what money or supplies the Logan County Quakers may have contributed to Wattles’ educational endeavor but the local community of color responded to his school in important ways. Some established members of the community, including Henry Newsom, bought land in Mercer County and became the first black landowners in the county. Newsom later deeded this land to several of his youngest children in addition to providing for their educations; presumably at Wattles’ school. One of Henry Newsom’s older sons, Nathan, also relocated to Mercer County during the late 1830s. The 1840 census recorded Nathan living with his wife and three children under the age of ten; a common pattern for those moving to Mercer County for the manual labor school. For Nathan’s family, the labor school seems to have been useful; his son Jesse attended Oberlin’s prep school in 1861 and 1862. Living alongside the Nathan Newsom family was his cousin, Willis Newsom. The family connection continued with another neighbor, Burwell Archer, who 45 46

Augustus had moved from being a radical Hicksite Quaker to a believer in Community and utopia. While not as invested in the idea of Community as his brother, Augustus embraced radical attitudes on abolition, diet, and equality. Report to the Trustees of the Emlen Institution for the Education of Children of African and Indian Descent, (Philadelphia; Joseph and William Kite, 1842), 10. Havorford College, Special Collections.

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was related to Willis and Nathan’s aunt, Dorothy. Archer’s family had moved into the area only recently and while they registered as free people of color in Logan County in 1838, seem to have moved almost immediately to the Mercer County school. Like the other members of this extended family, Archer was a historically free person of color from the Northampton County area. Peter Banks also brought his family to Mercer County. Banks was the son of Anthony Banks one of the other founding members of Logan County’s community of color. Wattles’ intended for his school to educate former slaves. Yet, many of the early black landowners and participants in the school were from historically free families who already owned land and had access to schools. For them, the benefits of Wattles’ school must have outweighed the cost of relocating and purchasing new land. In part, they may have seen a benefit in Wattles plan to create a manual labor school. This was a model of education that the Logan County community was already familiar with; the Quaker mission at Wapakoneta had included the principles of manual labor as did many colleges and schools throughout the Old Northwest.47 When he approached the executors of Samuel Emlen about the money Emlen had left in his will, he expressed the possibility that Native Americans could also be admitted. By the late 1830s, there were few natives living as natives in western Ohio except at Upper Sandusky which had its own mission school. Logan County and surrounding communities did retain ties to these native groups and recognized members of the Wyandot tribe continued to live in Logan County alongside people of color who claimed native heritage as well. Wattles’ proximity to Logan County and ready connections with that community made Emlen’s desire to educate children of both African and Indian descent more plausible.48 Wattles’ iteration of the Emlen Institute was not a success; in 1858 the institution moved to Pennsylvania. According to the trustees, part of that failure was because of the distance between Mercer County and the various Quaker communities in the area. It was also because the families of school age boys refused to allow them to board and instead lived alongside the school which then strained relations with the overwhelmingly

47 48

Kenneth Wheeler, “How Colleges Shaped a Public Culture of Usefulness,” in Andrew Cayton and Stuart Hobbs The Center of a Great Empire; The Ohio Country in the early American Republic (Athens, OH; Ohio University Press, 2005), 105–121. See Wistar’s Report to the Trustees of the Emlen School…for more detail on the prospects of enrolling Native Americans in the school. Wistar stresses the presence of local mission schools at Upper Sandusky and that many Indians were in Ohio and being successfully educated.

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white and non-Quaker population of the county.49 The Logan County people of color had no need to board their children; they could afford land in Mercer County, were already farmers, and had access to free schools back in Logan County. The advantages they had hoped to find at a Quaker-sponsored manual labor school were not from boarding their children but from the proximity of the school to Quakers and reformers. 6 Conclusion By the end of the nineteenth century, Logan County was an established rural community surrounded by other established rural communities. The vestiges of the frontier had long left the place, with the exceptions of place names, remnants of native culture like arrowheads and pots, and the presence of a long established community of people of color. Unlike the more recent influx of former slaves to industrial and oil boom towns like Lima, Dayton, and Springfield, Logan County’s community of color had deep roots in the region and connections to other rural communities in Rumley, Carthegena, and Paulding County. The community of color had plateaued at around one thousand individuals and increasingly represented the families of former slaves who moved into the county between 1850 and 1870. In newer communities of color, freed slaves lived alongside historically free people. For example, at Rumley in 1830 there were only 37 people of color in Shelby County. By 1840, 3 years after Rumley was platted there were 252 and by 1850 over 400 people of color resided in the county. Residents included the Goings brothers and their families alongside other historically free people including the Willis Newsom family, Archibald Fox who had a longstanding relationship with Miami County Quakers, and other assorted family members from the extended family networks developed by these historically free people. In the 1850 census, a number of the community came not from historically free families but from plantations where they had been manumitted by their owners or escaped. The most famous example of this is the settlement of the Randolph slaves who were supposed to move onto land purchased for them in Mercer County. White outrage prevented their settlement and many of these

49

First Report of the Trustees of the Emlen Institute for the Benefit of Children of African and Indian Descent, (Philadelphia; Culbertson and Rache, 1875), The Ohio State Historical Society.

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former slaves ended up in Rumley where they found black churches, a black school, and black benevolent societies for them to join.50 Local memory emphasized the role of Quakers in settling the region and in creating an active anti-slavery community, but rarely connected the Quakers to the presence of the community of color.51 Nor, by the turn of the twentieth century, did the local white community recognize that the community of color celebrated both their African American and their Native American heritage. The legacy of the early mixed race settlement of the area and the commitment of former southern Quakers to helping their mixed race neighbors was lost in the racial system that developed during the nineteenth century. Members of the community of color, likewise continued to emphasize their mixed race heritage. Carefully kept certificates of freedom, genealogies, and family stories preserved this community’s complicated identity. For example, in her twentieth century scrapbook, Myrtle Phillips collected freedom papers and genealogies for her family. In handwritten notes she documents an ancestor, Rebecca Allen as part “Taborn” Indian, party Irish, and part “gypsy.”52 Yet, this community of color lost the memory of early Quaker friendship and support that made the diverse rural frontier community possible. What is lost, then, is the way in which Quakers and their mixed race neighbors were mutually beneficial to one another. In providing a safe community and engaging in land transactions with this mixed race community, Quakers could fulfill their mission to both Native Americans and African Americans. While these Quakers also engaged in work with escaped slaves and Native missions, their immediate neighborhood reflected the diversity they had left in North Carolina. Their willingness to accept a mixed race family as fellow Quakers indicates a level of acceptance rarely found among Quakers in the old Northwest. 50

51 52

Mercer County seems to have been chosen partly because the land was cheap but also because of its proximity to Wattles’ school, Quaker communities, and people of color. Frank F. Mathias, “John Randolph’s Freedmen: The Thwarting of a Will,” The Journal of Southern History 39, no. 2 (1973): 263–72. For information on the short-lived village of Rumley along with other rural black communities in the region see Jill E. Rowe, “Mixing It Up Early African American Settlements in Northwestern Ohio,” Journal of Black Studies 39, no. 6 (July 1, 2009): 924–36. The 1882 History of Logan County is a good example of this phenomenon. Quakers and people of color appear in the history but are rarely discussed together. Myrtle Phillips Scrapbook, Box 11, folder 4, George and Myrtle Phillips Collection, Bowling Green State University Special Collections. Rebecca Allen Taborn and her husband Joseph were a part of the free people of color migration from Northampton County to Logan County; see the free African database: http://freeafricanamericans.com/Abel_Angus .htm.

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The mixed race community in Logan County were able to achieve a level of respectability that was exceptional for such communities in frontier Ohio and Indiana. They moved from Logan County to Carthegena when Augustus Wattles opened his school in part because of the Quaker mission network and became some the larger landowners in the area. They then applied the lessons they had learned about successful mission to help establish the community of Rumley along with other predominately black communities in the area. When descendants of the original settlers identified themselves as belonging to native groups, they were not only leveraging themselves to a higher social status. They were also invoking a larger history of the Ohio frontier and of relationships between Quakers and people of color that extended across counties, states, and denominations.

Chapter 11

“A Damnd Rebelious Race”: the U.S. Civilization Plan and Native Authority Lori Daggar These Miamies Genl are a damnd rebelious race and I believe it true what Lafountain tells me that Richardville caries the Key and nothing can be done without his assent. hugh b. mckeen, 18261

∵ U.S. claims to authority in the Ohio Country remained tenuous into the early years of the nineteenth century. The United States managed a military victory over allied Indian nations with the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and subsequently gained a large tract of land in southeastern Ohio with the Treaty of Greenville the following year, but still, the region remained contested. The endurance of the Miamis, Shawnees, and their neighbors, particularly in the northwest of what became the states of Ohio and Indiana, meant that U.S. authority in the region remained elusive, and that the hard work of empire remained. The federal government, keen to establish peace and power, hoped that Baltimore Friends would facilitate efforts to strengthen Americans’ presence and influence in the region. Agricultural education seemed the key. With the federal government’s support, Baltimore Friends established with both their own and federal funds several agricultural missions in an effort to share with indigenous peoples what they considered to be useful knowledge of agriculture and the mechanic arts.2 Friends’ religious tenets lay at the heart of their efforts, but so too did their experiences in urban Baltimore where they rubbed 1 Hugh B. McKeen to John Tipton, June 28, 1826, The John Tipton Papers, Vol. 1 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1942), 547. 2 For rhetoric of “useful knowledge” see, for example, Baltimore Yearly Meeting Indian Concerns committee minutes (bymic), Vol. I, 10 mo. 1795, 1. For federal support of Friends’ initiatives see, for example, May 22, 1801, Secretary of War Henry Dearborn to Henry Drinker, National Archives I, M15 Letters Sent by the Secretary of War, reel one, Washington, D.C. (hereafter nara). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_012

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elbows with free African Americans, street sweeps, and slaves.3 Baltimore was a ­thriving city because of its position as an urban center through which goods moved: it connected the agrarian lands of rural Maryland with a thriving harbor. Baltimore Friends understood the importance of economic infrastructure in the development of lands; their own flour and textile successes were built upon economic efforts akin to those underway in the early republic’s Ohio Country. Elisha Tyson and Elias Ellicott, both highly visible and active members of the Baltimore committee for Indian Concerns during the first decades of Baltimore Friends’ work in the Ohio Country, for example, were also prominent figures in Baltimore’s flour industry. Philip E. Thomas, who served as clerk of the committee, meanwhile, served as the first president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a railway that reaped the rewards of Americans’ settler colonialism and empire-building in the very region where his committee hoped to aid Native Americans. Baltimore Friends’ reform work proclaimed their intention to “civilize” indigenous peoples and transform a vast country into a place ­resembling home, by clearing additional fields, building fences, and contributing to the commodification of indigenous lands. Rather than operate merely as an assimilationist program, Friends’ mission efforts were connected with a broader mission complex that linked missionaries, reformers, manufacturers, federal employees, and indigenous peoples through networks of markets and capital. The material goods used in the agricultural missions, for example, offered a means both to stimulate business for eastern (and developing western) merchants and manufacturers and to develop a new consumer base in the Ohio Country.4 Though American efforts altered indigenous peoples’ lives and facilitated settler colonialism, the mission complex established a space within which many indigenous peoples could still, even after statehood, navigate and confront U.S. imperial power. Friends’ work in the region, undertaken as early as the 1790s, continued in the region into the nineteenth century and beyond the War of 1812. Just as they endured the warfare of the 1790s, however, indigenous polities and individuals used their growing market and government connections to earn wages and assert authority into the 1820s and 1830s. Indeed, Hugh McKeen’s 1826 statement, calling the Miamis a “damnd rebelious race,” reveals in stark terms their persistence. The discourse of civilization offered a language—mutually intelligible to Native peoples and U.S. citizens and officials—to demand goods and labor and to complain when such things failed to materialize. Many Miamis, 3 For a rich history of Baltimore in the early republic, see Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). 4 Lori J. Daggar, “The Mission Complex: Economic Development, ‘Civilization,’ and Empire in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Fall 2016): 467–491.

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S­ hawnees, and their neighbors, accustomed to dealing with U.S. officials and their missionary partners, thus seized upon the tools and language of “civilization,” and they employed a variety of strategies that ensured that they continued to possess and wield authority in the region despite the increasing ­pressures of U.S. empire-building and settler colonialism. The effects of American empire altered Native peoples’ lives irrevocably, and many endured dislocation, hardship, and violence. There was, however, room for some to wield authority in the face of Americans’ efforts to colonize ever-­expansive territories. Some Miamis, Shawnees, and others who remained in Ohio and Indiana after the war became neighbors, employees, and employers in a region that boasted a growing Euroamerican population. Some used their connections with Euroamericans to make claims upon the U.S. state and individuals, some employed the discourse of civilization to secure both material goods and bolster their political agendas, while others contemplated the advantages of participating in nation-building projects in places as far flung as Missouri. Such strategies illuminate the ways in which indigenous peoples found ways to remain connected to their lands or, when that appeared impossible, at least their people. While many scholars view the War of 1812 as the death knell of indigenous authority in the “old Northwest,” attention both to the strategies that emerged as a result of the mission complex and to indigenous peoples’ roles in developing and participating in the dynamic Ohio Country economy after Ohio and Indiana statehood reveals that their authority, though altered, endured.5 Such efforts did not come, however, without a price. Indians’ claims-­making bolstered U.S. federal power, and it linked them ever closer with the legal and bureaucratic policies of the United States. What was more, when Native ­peoples dared deviate from U.S. officials’ expectations of typical Native ­behavior— when they actually succeeded in adapting and adopting the ways of the American Empire—Native peoples fueled Americans’ calls for Indian removal by remaining present. Nonetheless, by appropriating U.S. Indian policies for their own purposes, some indigenous peoples forced Americans to grapple with the contradictions that lay at the heart of their civilization schemes.6

…

5 Stephen Warren and Stewart Rafert also detail the experiences of Shawnees and Miamis’ diverse experiences in the region. See Stephen Warren, The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795– 1870 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Stewart Rafert, The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People, 1654–1994 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1996). 6 Lori J. Daggar, “The Mission Complex: Economic Development, ‘Civilization,’ and Empire in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Fall 2016): 467–491.

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In 1816 when peace returned to the towns and fields of Ohio and Indiana after the War of 1812, the economic and political changes already underway in the region continued apace. For some, the year ushered in cause for ­celebration: Euroamerican inhabitants of Indiana Territory found themselves citizens of the United States endowed with all of the political rights and privileges (if they were male) that accompanied statehood. Many of Indiana’s indigenous peoples, meanwhile, aimed to cultivate and dwell upon their lands much as they had prior to the state’s incorporation into the official limits of the metropole. Statehood meant, however, that Indiana—and Ohio as well—boasted a robust population. And both states were growing. Surges in population continued after statehood, and it encouraged the ongoing development of interstate infrastructure that facilitated immigrants’ movement and employment. In the ongoing struggle to give order to the chaos of U.S. immigration to the region, non-government agencies materialized to address the problems of labor and economy that accompanied U.S. colonialism. In 1817, for example, Nathan Guilford, Ethan Stone, and Daniel Roe organized the Western Emigration Society in order to facilitate American m ­ ovement into this “Western Country,” newly free from British occupation. They declared Cincinnati “the most proper place for such a Society” because of its size, “local situation,” and the fact that it operated as “a thorough-fare through which much of the migrating population passes.”7 By the time of the society’s founding, Cincinnati contained a much larger population than either the more northern expanses of the state or its neighbor to the west, Indiana. One inhabitant estimated that the city boasted “about 9,000 inhabitants, 15 lawyers, not the most eminent, 20 physicians” and that “the number of emigrants that are daily arriving are imense.”8 The emigration society eased the “great uncertainty and embarrassment” in “not knowing where to seek employment, where to apply for information,” or knowing “where they can find a situation best suited to their circumstances.”9 The society thus functioned as a matchmaker in the business of employment, receiving applications from “persons wanting to employ Mechanics, Tradesmen, Labourers, &cs.,” as well as from “persons wishing for employment of any kind,” and it connected them with employers seeking to bolster their fortunes through hired labor.10 These connections proved essential to the practical functioning of everyday life in the nineteenth-century Ohio Country, and by the 1820s, the practical problems of making ends meet shaped the lives of Euroamericans and Native peoples alike. 7 May 20, 1817, Western Emigration Society Papers, vfm 519, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio. 8 Samuel Todd, Post-Script in Nathan Guilford to William Avril, Western Emigration Society Papers, vfm, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio. 9 May 20, 1817, Western Emigration Society Papers. 10 Ibid.

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In the midst of this changing economic, political, and social landscape, some Shawnees and their neighbors in the region endeavored to take advantage of missionary and federal labors, a strategy they had pursued before the war. While Euroamericans used agencies such as the Western Emigration Society to form connections, leaders like Captain Lewis at Lewis Town and Black Hoof at Wapakoneta maintained relationships with government officials, other indigenous peoples, traders, members of the Society of Friends and other missionaries in order to secure material advantages, organize their own labor force, and cultivate closer political relationships with U.S. officials. Despite their expertise in the arts of agriculture, for example, Shawnees requested and accepted Friends’ assistance and instruction in cultivating crops. Though the War of 1812 had hit the region hard, when Friends visited Wapakoneta in 1816, they noted that several hundred acres of corn and other infrastructure remained intact. Black Hoof and his people endeavored nonetheless to take advantage of the benefits Friends offered, rejoicing at the “prospect of the same help that we received from our friends the Quakers before the war.”11 Though such rhetoric, recorded by Friends, undoubtedly served Friends’ own aims as political allies who had historically advocated for Shawnees, Friends nonetheless did offer means to facilitate Shawnees’ own economic development projects. In maintaining and cultivating their connections with missionaries, Shawnees, Miamis, and their neighbors engaged a strategy that drew upon older paradigms of Native-Euroamerican interaction and offered opportunities for indigenous peoples’ success in a region undergoing increasingly rapid economic development. For their part, the Baltimore Friends wasted no time in traveling to Ohio and Indiana to assess the condition of the region’s Indian peoples and begin work.12 Their report to the Secretary of War William H. Crawford stressed that the Shawnees required further instruction from Friends to complete their transformation into civilized peoples. Writing to the secretary from Baltimore in August 1816, James Ellicott and Philip E. Thomas informed him that they had recently traveled among the Shawnees at Lewis Town and Wapakoneta and found both Shawnees and Wyandots in Ohio “anxiously disposed to obtain instructions relative to the cultivation of their lands.”13 In a population of 800 at

11

James Ellicott and Philip E. Thomas, August 1, 1816, Report on feasibility of introducing farming and other civilising activities among the Indians at Waupaghkonnetta and Lewis Town by the Society of Friends at Baltimore (from nara RG 107, Secretary of War, Letters Received), Shawnee File, Box # 8027, Folder 1 of 1 (1816), Ethnohistory Collection, IU. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. Friends reported a similar situation at Sears’ Town. Wyandots near Upper Sandusky, meanwhile, received annuities from the government and were reportedly anxious “to receive instruction in their farming business.”

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­ apakoneta, for example, the Shawnees had “400 acres of ground enclosed by W tolerable good fences, 250 acres being planted in Indian corn.”14 They cultivated that land “principally with hoes,” however, because they had only two ploughs. That lack encouraged Ellicott and Thomas to reiterate that the Shawnees and Wyandots yet required instruction—the use of hoes seemingly indicated their continued ignorance of agricultural techniques writ large. The Friends had successfully overcome the Shawnees’ supposed “general indisposition” to work, “which prevailed…when the Society of Friends first e­ mbarked in this concern,” and they were pleased that “the principal obstacles which retarded our successes are in a great measure removed” thanks to the mission foundation laid by Friends before the war and Britain’s defeat.15 If they obtained their projected budget for work among the Indians ($4,720), Ellicott and Thomas concluded, the Friends could alleviate “[t]he situation of these Indians,” which was “peculiarly calculated to awaken the commiseration and excite the benevolence of all who feel for the sufferings of their fellow men.”16 The Friends’ report to the War Department may have reflected a strategic blindness to Shawnees’ economic ingenuity and success as agriculturalists: they either could not see the Shawnees as proficient or they weighted their record to reflect their own agenda.17 Whatever the case, Friends’ partnership with the War Department established a foundation for missionary-government cooperation on the continent and abroad. The War Department had relied on Friends as correspondents and agricultural missionary partners prior to the War of 1812 in part because their funds and organizational strengths made them efficient and useful partners. After the war, the War Department increasingly incorporated other societies into its cadre of philanthropic partnerships, particularly the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (abcfm), established in 1810.18 Moreover, growing religious fervor and immigration to the Ohio region after the conclusion of the war fueled multi-denominational, federally funded mission work that modeled Friends’ labor-intensive civilizing mission work. When the Civilization Act of 1819 passed—guaranteeing $10,000 annual support for missionary projects—it codified twenty years of partnership b­ etween 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 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,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 19, no. 4, 601–628. 18 See Emily Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2015).

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Friends and the federal government. Drawing on the example offered by Friends’ cooperation with the state, it opened opportunities for a larger variety of voluntary and religious societies to participate in the civilizing project. With the passage of the act, the federal government wrote into law its determination to transform non-citizens into potentially assimilable, culturally homogenous co-inhabitants of North America. Individuals and societies received funds for building construction and running schools and institutions of learning for Native peoples, and the monies were contingent upon the schools’ success. Unlike Baltimore Friends’ efforts in Ohio and Indiana, many of those schools included literacy education, though manual and agricultural labor remained a centerpiece as well.19 The government also, moreover, expected those employed by funded institutions to “impress on the minds of the Indians, the friendly and benevolent views of the government towards them.”20 In addition to bureaucratizing the missionaries’ relations to the state, the act institutionalized the United States’ economic and imperial ambitions.21 The act and the U.S. imperial market economy encouraged missionaries to conceive of and brand their mission endeavors in a manner tailored to ideas of development, “improvement,” and profit. In the early 1820s, Baptist missionary Isaac McCoy centered his mission work at a school that offered reading and writing instruction, and ensured that males were “instructed in agriculture, and Mechanic Arts,” and “the Females in Spinning, Weaving, Knitting, Sewing &c.”22 Missionaries in the field, first Jesuits and then notably Friends and Moravians, usually wrote to their home congregations with news of their feats of conversion among the “heathens” in efforts to solicit funds for future work. McCoy and Friends, on the other hand, wrote not of religious triumph over heathenism, but of economic development, and they solicited funds from the United States government. In an effort to obtain federal support for his mission, McCoy informed Secretary of War John C. Calhoun in 1821 that “[o]ur prospects in relation to those several tribes (the Scattering Mohigans ­Accepted) are truly 19 20 21 22

Students at a school in Cornwall, CT, for example, spent two and a half days laboring the “school’s agricultural property.” See John Demos, The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 72. February 29, 1820, regulations for the civilization of the Indians, Department of War. nara M15, 379. Civilization Fund Act. March 3, 1819, in Francis Paul Prucha, ed., Documents of United States Indian Policy, 3rd. edition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 33. McCoy, Isaac to J.C. Calhoun, Fort Wayne, October 1, 1821, Secretary of War, Letters Received, M-145 (15), RG 107, nara in Shawnee File, Box #8029, folder 1 of 1 (1821), Ethnohistory Collection, Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

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inviting. And we trust that the patronage of the Government, And the liberality of the public, will render our funds adequate to the undertaking: I therefore humbly solicit a share of the 10,000 Dollars appropriated by Government for Indian reform.”23 To bolster his argument for funding, he detailed both the immense labor required for his mission work as well as ample evidence of his mission’s economic contributions. He explained that “[b]eside the Superintendent & the Directress, there are belonging to the Establishment. A School Teacher, An Agent to procure Supplies of provision &c- And four labouring men. two assistent females. and a labouring woman.” McCoy then wrote that “[w]e have cultivated this season 35 Acres of Land, 100 have 8 spinning wheels and a Loom— The property belonging to the Mission consists of Land improvements, Horses, Cattle, Hogs, farming utensils, Houshold furniture. &c—and estimated at 1,800 Dollars.”24 Thus, while his evangelical work still mattered, McCoy recognized that a successful appeal for federal monies depended upon the extent to which he could make a case for his essential role in economic progression. The prospect of receiving U.S. federal funds encouraged him and other missionaries to offer a certain type of missionary work and reporting. Meanwhile, many Native peoples continued to engage the imperial market as consumers, employers, and neighbors. Just as they had with Baltimore Friends before the war, some capitalized on the economic opportunities that the new missions engendered. McCoy’s report to the federal government, for example, confirmed that Shawnees and their neighbors remained the beneficiaries of missionaries’ labor. Moreover, as Euroamerican population numbers increased, Indian leaders increasingly took advantage of that growth by hiring immigrant men on their lands when they could. They incrementally embraced the Euroamerican economic model, and they exploited their role in the U.S. economy to assert their own political authority and independence. Such was the case in Ohio and Indiana as well as locales further afield. In 1820, for example, a group of Shawnees and Delawares in Missouri informed President James Monroe that since “our Tools will need frequent repair, and our Horses Shod, we ask if you are willing to give us a Black-Smith for five years only, to mend our ploughs &c. during that time, some of our Young Men, will learn with him to do it for us.”25 The stipulation that the blacksmith should stay for “five years only” suggested that the Shawnees and Delawares desired to 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 September 16, 1820, Shawnee and Delaware Indians, Talk to the President of the United States, Principal Town on Apple Creek, State of Missouri, RG 107, M-92 (14), nara in Delaware File, Box # 1524 (1820–1827), folder 1 of 2 (July 1820–1821), Ethnohistory Collection, Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

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extract knowledge and labor from the hired man but did not wish to tolerate an open-ended engagement with the American. Instead, they maintained a preference for reciprocal, gift-based relationships that strengthened political ties between nations, even as they asserted themselves as employers with the power to re-hire or dismiss contracted labor at the end of a specified period of work.26 The Shawnees and Delawares integrated Euroamerican ideas of apprenticeship, hired labor, and contract, but as they built their own economic infrastructure they asserted their relative autonomy, creating and reinforcing their political connections to the United States as contracting nations. These Shawnees and Delawares, like many in Ohio and Indiana, embraced and manipulated commercial market relations, but they also combined concepts of debt and market exchange with those of older, trade-based forms of exchange with which they were familiar. According to George Johnston’s 1829 promissory notebook (a collection of receipts that record Wapakoneta ­Shawnee’s names, debts, and the items they purchased), approximately 200 Wapakoneta Shawnee debtors in Ohio failed to pay off their loans, and a roughly equal number of receipts were torn out of the notebook, signifying debts canceled. Johnston’s notebook thus provides evidence of the Shawnees’ participation in a cycle of credit and debit and in the larger U.S. economy, just like the large number of Euroamerican debtors of the republic.27 Indeed, every needle and yard of cloth marked as sold signified the profits of merchants and entrepreneurs elsewhere. Given that the Shawnees possessed a robust giftexchange tradition, they may have viewed the goods as gifts. What is certain, however, is that they borrowed Johnston’s money to secure items such as cloth, knives, bridles, and teakettles, and they did so to the detriment of Johnston’s finances. The ambiguities of the evidence reveal the consequences of the intertwining of a variety of economic understandings. While President Jefferson and William Henry Harrison conspired to drive up Indians’ debts in an effort to ­facilitate land sales in the early nineteenth century, some Native peoples nonetheless found ways to take advantage of those schemes.28 26

27 28

Though Joseph Hall’s work on gift exchange centers on the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, it offers excellent analysis, applicable elsewhere in Indian Country (as demonstrated in chapter two, for example), of the importance of gifts in cementing political relationships. See Joseph M. Hall, Jr., Zamumo’s Gifts: Indian-European Exchange in the Colonial Southeast (Early American Studies) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). George C. Johnston, Book of promissory notes, 1829–1831. Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, OH. See also, Daggar, “Mission Complex.” In 1803, Jefferson penned a “secret letter” to Harrison describing his scheme for expanding Indians’ debts. See Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, Feb. 27, 1803, in Esarey, Messages and Letters, 70–73.

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While most Shawnees obtained these goods in cash or future cash payments, some secured the wares or canceled their debts through barter. Such transactions included Native women in the republic’s emerging economy, and they offer a means to expand historians’ understanding of women’s roles in the development of early American markets. “Turkey Feathers wife” obtained goods at Johnson’s store, for example, as did the Shawnee Mary DeShane who paid off part of her debt with “winter Deer Skins” in the “amount of fifty cents.”29 The latter transaction offers a glimpse of the ways in which multiple economies collided with and became intelligible to one another in Wapakoneta. In this instance, DeShane exchanged skins, once the basis for trade in the region along with furs, for both a good and for a cancellation of standing debts. This system of market exchange shaped Ohio Country Indians’ ideas of gift-giving and reciprocity, and it also produced a regional economy built through economic syncretism. Wapakoneta Shawnees welcomed Quakers to their town and accepted the agricultural infrastructure they offered, but their willingness to use Friends and other Americans like George Johnston for economic investment purposes suggested a kind of economic translation rather than assimilation.30 When Friend Isaac Harvey, then missionary at Wapakoneta, attended the funerary services of the aged Shawnee chief Black Hoof in 1831, he observed that the Shawnees intensely grieved the man’s death, and that they marked their loss with food and ritual. He noted that “[t]wenty deer were killed, beside a large number of turkeys and what smaller wild animals they considered fit to eat—no tame animal or fowl was suffered to be eaten on that occasion, though there was a large quantity of bread prepared.”31 Here is revealed Shawnees’ selective appropriation of Euroamerican goods and practices and the complicated nature of their politics: “tame” or domesticated animals had no place in this ritual of death. In 1810 Wapakoneta Shawnees had turned Tecumseh away from their midst and refused to buy into Tenskwatawa’s spiritual message of difference. In 1831, they maintained their acceptance of Euroamerican labor and ­infrastructure, but

29 30

31

George C. Johnston, Book of promissory notes, 1829–1831. Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, OH. Ideas of “economic translation” are here akin to David Silverman’s work on “religious translation.” See David J. Silverman, “Indians, Missionaries, and Religious Translation: Creating Wampanoag Christianity in Seventeenth-Century Martha’s Vineyard,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Apr., 2005): 141–174. Henry Harvey, History of the Shawnee Indians from the Year 1681 to 1854, Inclusive (Cincinnati: Ephraim Morgan & Sons, 1855), 187.

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also revealed that they too valued their own cultural practices. Such episodes further demonstrate that cooperation with the U.S. government and its imperial agents was selective and politically and economically purposeful rather than mere accommodation of U.S. “expansion.”32 Labor, trade, and cultural practices thus remained arenas within which indigenous peoples could exercise power. Indeed, the Shawnees’ and Delawares’ request for a five-year contracted blacksmith demonstrates that Native peoples invested in their lands by taking advantage of Euroamerican labor, government money, and their annuity payments. At the same time, however, the War Department bolstered the local economy and facilitated settler colonialism by hiring men in need of work. Though the number of men hired to labor on Indian lands was relatively small, they were hired to perform the same tasks that Friends once handled. John Johnston wrote to William H. Crawford in 1816 that “labouring men is much wanted to instruct them [the Indians] in farming and to enable them to live on their own industry.”33 He went on to request a budget of $2,000 that included payment for the labor, sustenance, and tools of six men, two each for Shawnees, Wyandots, Delawares, and Senecas living near Johnston’s Piqua agency.34 By 1829, the Miamis were due to receive the services of “10 Labourers” as part of the fulfillment of their annuity payment for that year.35 Those ten hired hands each received forty-five dollars and worked at either the “Miamie Villages” or they received their compensation for “[l]abour performed for [the] Thorntown party [of Miamis].”36 These workers may have 32

On spiritual movements and “accommodation” v. “nativism,” see Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science) (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Daniel Mandell’s work on nineteenth-century New England similarly reveals the ways in which Native peoples adapted their own economies to those of Euroamericans. Daniel Mandell, Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780–1880 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). 33 Johnston, John to William H. Crawford Piqua, October 22, 1816, Shawnee File, 1813–1816, Box #8027, Folder 1 of 1 (1816), Ethnohistory Collection, Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. 34 Ibid. 35 Miami and Eel River Indians, Receipt, Annuity Payment, August 24-December 23, 1829 (from N. Robertson and D. Ricker, ed., The John Tipton Papers, vol. 2, pp. 186–189), Miami file, 1829–1847, Box #5023, folder 1 of 1 (1829), Ethnohistory Collection, IU. 36 Tipton, John, Abstract of Payments for Labor at Miami Villages, 1829 (from N. Robertson and D. Ricker, ed., The John Tipton Papers, vol. 2, p. 238), Miami file, Box #5023, Folder 1 of 1 (1829), Ethnohistory Collection, IU. The “Thorntown” Miamis were Eel River Miamis who once lived on the Thorntown Reserve lands that were ceded to the United States in 1828.

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thus supplemented their household subsistence economy with wages earned for work performed on behalf of the Miamis.37 The relationship between market development and “civilization” established by the mission complex endured after the War of 1812, and it broadened to draw upon the labors of missionaries and non-missionaries alike. U.S. immigration to the Ohio Country thus offered Native peoples and the War Department a growing labor force, even as it increased tensions between E ­ uroamericans and their Native neighbors. That some migrants labored for Native peoples, moreover, reflects the contingencies of U.S. political and economic development: the mission complex, replete with its message of assimilation, offered both the possibility and the tools, labor, and infrastructure required for indigenous peoples to remain in the region and become either masters of Ohio Valley farms or yeoman farmers themselves. Indeed, while the federal War Department arranged for Euroamericans to labor on Ohio Indians’ lands, Miami and Shawnee leaders such as the prominent Richardville family among the Mississinewa Miamis contracted Euroamerican laborers on their nations’ lands to perform the same tasks Quaker missionaries like William Kirk once had. While scholars such as Stephen Warren view Shawnees and their neighbors’ cooperation with both Quaker missionaries and the civilization plan more broadly as evidence of their desire to appear as a peaceful people capable of living among the white Euroamerican population of Ohio, such an interpretation overlooks Native peoples’ desire to manipulate U.S. policies for their own proactive—as opposed to reactive—economic and political purposes.38 The Richardvilles, like Little Turtle among the Miamis during the first decade of the nineteenth century, took advantage of the shared language of economy and improvement that was, in part, a consequence of the U.S. civilizing project and its rhetoric, and they cultivated connections with Euroamericans that facilitated Miamis’ ability to hire and manage labor on their lands. Jean Baptiste Richardville, in particular, used his presence in both the regional fur trade and as an employer in Indiana to cultivate connections with the U.S. federal government. Richardville’s father was a Frenchman and his mother was a prominent Miami. He received a Euroamerican education and was well-schooled in the ways of European politics, economy, and diplomacy. Richardville profited

37 38

While census data is inconclusive, the men who labored on Miami lands were likely from nearby lands and had recently moved there. 1820 U.S. Census; Census Place: Wayne, Indiana; Page 236; nara Roll: M33_15; Image 135, accessed on Ancestry.com, June 28, 1815. Stephen Warren, The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795–1870 (Urbana: University of ­Illinois Press, 2005), 43–68.

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from both the fur trade and Euroamerican immigration to the region, and his accumulation of wealth—he was reportedly the wealthiest man in Indiana by 1840—suggests that his economic aims were personal. He nonetheless worked to secure a prosperous future for the Miamis in Indiana by ensuring that his economic interests intertwined with Miami political interests.39 To that end, Richardville and his son John secured laborers for work on Miami lands. They hired out tasks that reflected what U.S. officials understood to be “civilized” ideals, and their efforts suggest that Miamis and their neighbors endeavored to use Euroamerican conceptions of economy: they invested in their lands in order to become formidable economic players. In 1824, for example, the Richardvilles arranged for William Ewing to make “a Contract with the Miami’s to Make rails and fence their ground” and, the following year, William Caswell earned $3.00 in return for making a plow frame.40 In the case of Ewing, the elder Richardville, in particular, used the resources available to his people to hire out work that promised future returns. Ideas of investment, gaining prominence in the United States and the Ohio Country, lurked behind such labor contracts. Hiring Ewing to fence ground with a contract, moreover, suggests the adoption of evolving ideas of free labor and private property. U.S. market practices combined with the existing exchange economy in the Ohio Country to create a market system characterized, increasingly, by dynamic ideas of investment and production and that included Native and non-Native workers and employers. The emerging Ohio Country economy was one wherein inhabitants struggled to assert themselves at the top of an economic hierarchy. The fact that Euroamericans were willing to perform such tasks reveals both their desire and need to work and their willingness to labor for Miami or Shawnee masters.41 Richardville was largely responsible for cultivating a connection with the Ewing brothers, and while he used them to invest in his peoples’ lands by contracting them to fence, clear, and plough lands, he also used the relationship in other productive ways. The Ewing brothers and their father were experienced traders who sought profit, and they demonstrate the extent of economic change underway in the nineteenth-century Ohio Country. Whereas regional traders once offered goods in exchange for valuable furs, these men made their profits by offering goods on credit, and they often succeeded in racking up ­Indians’ debts that could then translate into profit during treaties with the U.S. 39 40 41

Bradley J. Birzer, “Entangling Empires, Fracturing Frontiers: Jean Baptiste Richardville and the Quest for Miami Autonomy, 1760–1841” (Ph.D. Diss., Indiana University, 1998). Joseph Richardville to Jean B. Richardville, April 26, 1824, The John Tipton Papers, Vol. 1, 1809–1827 (Indianapolis, 1942), 357, 485. See also, Daggar, “Mission Complex.” See also, Daggar, “Mission Complex.”

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government since debts were often deducted and paid out of treaty annuities and payments. Richardville was himself a shrewd businessman, however, and he knew the power of consumerism. As historian Stewart Rafert makes clear, “[t]he Ewing firm could not survive without Miami annuities, and the Miami could not have resisted demands for removal as long as they did without the influence of the Ewings.”42 Thus, as Miamis secured annuities from various land deals, they offered business to the profit-minded Ewings who supplied them various goods; this, in turn, ensured Richardville and his countrymen Euroamerican allies who shared an interest in Miami persistence in Indiana. Emerging capitalist ideas thus offered Miamis opportunities to thwart both U.S. imperialist ambitions and U.S. colonists’ efforts to remove them until 1846. Even then, however, Richardville and another chief, Francis Godfroy, purchased lands in the state, and though many Miamis did remove westward, some remained there after the removal years. In addition to forming connections with regional economic players such as the Ewing brothers, Richardville maintained a public role as a chief among the Miamis, and he attended many treaties and councils prior to and after the War of 1812. As a consequence, he cultivated and maintained connections with both Miamis and federal officials, and such a strategy served him well as a political and economic leader in Indiana. When, in the early 1830s, the United States endeavored to buy the remaining Miami lands in Indiana, Indian agent John Tipton and others knew that Richardville was savvy, and they knew that he stood in the way of completely swindling the Miamis. George B. Porter, a U.S. commissioner, wrote to Cass in 1833 that he “cannot…believe that these Indians will dispose of the whole of their Lands:—nor are they willing now to move West of the Mississippi:—nor is fifty cents per acre a sufficient price. Chief Richardville knows, as well as anyone else their value. They are worth at least two dollars per acre.”43 Playing the property game according to Americans’ own rules of market economy and value increased Miamis’ ability to remain on their lands, and it explains, in part, why they were able to maintain much of their territorial holdings into the 1840s and beyond the time when most other regional nations sold their holdings to the United States. Though it is very possible that Tipton was truthful when he informed Eaton in 1830 that many Miamis “have many times requested me to pay the heads of families, or 42

Stewart Rafert, The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People, 1654–1994 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1996), 96. 43 Porter, g.b. Letter to Cass, Fort Wayne, August 23, 1833 (from National Archives, Record Group 75, O.I.A., Letters Received), Miami File, Box #5023, folder 2 of 2 (1830–1833), Ethnohistory Collection, IU.

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individuls, alledgeing that the village chiefs cheate them,” it appears that Miami leaders such as Richardville cultivated connections with Euroamericans and their economy in an effort to ensure the best possible political and economic future for his people even as he turned a profit for himself.44 The Shawnees at Wapakoneta also utilized the connections established by the mission complex to invest in their futures, but unlike the Miamis, they maintained closer connections with Friends after the War of 1812. Black Hoof and other Wapakoneta Shawnees invited Friends to visit their town and resume mission work there in 1815, and, in response Friends arranged for Joseph and Martha Rhodes to offer instruction in the agricultural arts, domestic production, and literacy. When Martha died in Ohio, Black Hoof and his countrymen grieved her passing alongside Joseph, and they lamented Rhodes’s departure from the mission.45 The relationship between Friends and the Shawnees thus continued to be simultaneously personal and practical, with the lines between the two blurred. Friends were political allies and useful sources of economic assistance, and their personal relationships with Native peoples, built upon a century and a half of cooperation, facilitated Indians’ efforts to remain in their homes and ancestral lands. Securing labor and maintaining connections with government officials and missionaries proved crucial for Native leaders, but those Shawnees, Miamis, and their neighbors who did not occupy positions of leadership also found ways both to participate in the expanding market economy and manipulate U.S. policies to their advantage. Wapakoneta Shawnees’ belief in the economic advantages afforded from Friends’ labor are perhaps most obvious in their reaction to an 1831 treaty in which they sold their lands to the U.S. government. After misunderstanding treaty deliberations, the Shawnees sought out the assistance of Quakers. In looking toward removal they explained, [w]e are sorry to find that it is to be the price of our farms that is to take us to our new homes. We expected no such thing—we understood plainly that the government was to be at all that expense, and that what our improvements here were worth, after being valued by good men, was to be paid us in money, to assist us in making farms at our new homes. We have good homes here, and had abundance of labor and pains to make 44 45

John Tipton to John H. Eaton, February 15, 1830 (from N. Robertson and D. Ricker, ed., The John Tipton Papers, vol. 2, p. 250–251), Miami File, Box #5023, Folder 1 of 2 (1830–1833), Ethnohistory Collection, IU. For report on Martha Rhodes’s death and Black Hoof’s sympathies, see 10 mo 16, 1817, bymic, vol. ii.

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them. We wanted good men to value our improvements, for we are not ashamed of our homes…We cannot let our property go in this way; if we do, we are a ruined people.46 While Shawnees’ plea to Quakers reveals them as peoples attached to their lands, the passage also clearly speaks to their hope that investment in their lands—not merely accommodating or accepting Euroamericans’ prescriptions for their endurance—would enable them to keep their homes. When confronted with sale, these Shawnees understood their homes as investments that could yield higher returns during land negotiations—or at least, they were willing to employ the rhetoric of economic development as a means to an end. While Ohio Country Indian leaders were crucial to efforts to carve a place for their peoples in the region, the individuals who supported Friends and their leaders’ “improvement” efforts and who built fences and contributed to the efforts to invest in their lands, also envisioned and used the tools of the U.S. market economy to work for a future among the growing Euroamerican population in Ohio. Ohio Indian leaders and their peoples in the early nineteenth century often possessed, wielded, and supported economic and political power in ways that harkened back to the ideals of reciprocity and leadership common among many of the region’s peoples. Generous gift-giving once cemented hereditary chiefs’ authority among their people, and chiefs’ oversight of the distribution of annuities or land operated similarly in the nineteenth century. When Richardville or Godfroy enabled some to remain in Indiana by offering a place for them on their recently purchased lands, they not only bolstered their own power, but they served their people in much the same way as their forefathers had for centuries. These leaders took advantage of the connections established by the mission complex, used them to serve their people as best they could, and, while they were at it, continued to mold, as employers, traders, and farmers, the creation and expansion of the U.S. market economy in the Ohio Country.

…

Mission work and the civilization plan linked Ohio Indians ever closer to the U.S. market economy, and they opened new avenues of economic manipulation and strategic persistence for Native leaders and their peoples—avenues that simultaneously borrowed and diverged from earlier imperial precedents. As was the case prior to the War of 1812, such economic engagement continued 46 Harvey, History of the Shawnee Indians, 204–205.

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to influence indigenous peoples’ politics. Indigenous strategies for combating U.S. power increasingly involved claims making, petition writing, and a general willingness to issue complaints to state officials. Such appeals, though not altogether new, often involved matters of investment, labor, debt, or claims for economic redress. Sometimes these requests were successful, and sometimes they were not. Regardless, they strengthened the bonds between Ohio Country Indian leaders and government officials and Native nations and the U.S. state, just as economic strategies linked Native peoples closer to the U.S. market economy that they helped to create. As Native leaders like Richardville employed a variety of strategies to secure a future for their peoples amidst a rapidly growing Ohio Country population, they participated in the creation of the U.S. economy, and they continued to contribute to the growth of the state. The ability to make claims upon the U.S. federal government offered Ohio Country Indians an opportunity to engage with the state, but it also reveals that while there was power in making such appeals, indigenous peoples’ opportunities were increasingly defined by that growing state.47 Native peoples in the Ohio Country used their connections with Indian agent John Johnston, missionaries, and others to learn and navigate the evolving U.S. bureaucracy and legal system in order to claim what was rightfully theirs, and they could do so in large part because of the authority of indigenous leaders, the desires of U.S. officials, and the pressures of land hungry U.S. immigrants. As Richardville’s successful application for a trading license suggests, Native leaders’ power and relationships with traders and officials meant that regional peace and U.S. hopes for eventual removal often hinged upon these leaders’ happiness; as a result, these relationships became crucial for Americans’ own e­ conomic and political gains, just as they had during the heyday of the fur trade in the pays d’en haut.48 Though some Native peoples used their connections with U.S. officials or missionaries to make claims against their Native neighbors, they also made claims upon the U.S. state for redress whenever they perceived a failure to fulfill a political or economic obligation. In 1826, for example, Le Gros, ­Richardville’s 47

48

Stephanie McCurry’s work on women in the Civil War South offers excellent analysis on the role of petitions in forming bonds with the state. See Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010). Women, in particular, played vital roles in the cultivation of political connections with Euroamerican economies. See, in particular, Susan Sleeper-Smith Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst, MA, 2001); Lucy Elderveld Murphy, A Gathering of Rivers: Indians, Metis, and Mining in the Western Great Lakes, 1737–1832 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).

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Miami compatriot, issued a lengthy complaint on behalf of his nation that weaved together economic concerns with an assertion of political authority. He informed the Secretary of War, James Barbour, that while the United States had fulfilled most of the provisions of the 1818 Treaty at St. Mary’s, it had promised the Miamis a blacksmith and a gunsmith, two laborers who had not yet been provided to his countrymen. Weaving ideas of economics, ­reciprocity, and sovereignty into his appeal, Le Gros asked, “Now father, who is to pay the damage which has accrued to my nation in consequence of this failure?” and he followed this query with a remedy for the United States’ misstep.49 He declared, “I wish to make a proposition to you, which is, that you will authorise our Agent, to employ a good blacksmith, who can repair our guns likewise, and a good trusty Miller in lieu of the gun smith as promised by the Treaty, to be placed at the mills, as that position will be central to the nation.”50 Though the treaty stipulations were eight years old, less than one week after the Miami’s complaint, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Thomas L. McKenney agreed to find, employ, and send Le Gros his miller; by the summer of that same year, the miller was in Miami Country.51 Le Gros’s success reveals the extent to which Native nations in the Ohio Country continued to wield power in their interactions with the United States into the 1820s and beyond despite the political consequences of the War of 1812. Though U.S. policies constrained their actions to some degree, Native peoples still found potent ways to negotiate for power, just as they had when they forged partnerships with Quaker diplomats in the 1750s and 1790s. Le Gros’s manner of bargaining and negotiation was characteristic of Miami relations with the United States into the 1840s. In 1826, for example, Le Gros confidently informed Governor Lewis Cass that “[y]ou have made a request of us for our land, which we have already refused. I told you our situation. We have a right to trade or exchange our property.”52 Here, Le Gros made clear that he ­understood economic participation as a fundamental right. Though Native petitioners did not shy from addressing the U.S. president directly, more direct relationships also, of course, offered numerous benefits to Native peoples even if they were formed as a direct consequence of U.S. imperial ambitions. In Ohio, Shawnees’ close relationship with John Johnston offered a potential means to secure payment for crimes committed by .

49 Le Gros to James Barbour, January 27, 1826, Tipton Papers, 517–18. 50 Ibid. 51 Thomas L. McKenney to Le Gros, February 2, 1826, in Tipton Papers, 519–20; Hugh B. ­McKeen to John Tipton, June 28, 1826, in Tipton Papers, 546–47. 52 Chief Le Gros to Gov. Lewis Cass, 12 October 1826 in Stewart Rafert, The Miami Indians of Indiana, 77.

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Euroamericans. Johnston complained to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Thomas L. McKenney, in 1825 that he was “often compelled to grant renumeration to the Whites out of the Annuities of the Indians, and when an Indian suffers loss, which is now frequently the case…no redress can be afforded for want of funds at the disposal of the Agent. It is beleived [sic] $1000 would not satisfy the claims of this nature now pending, and which are just and equitable.”53 Johnston went on to submit a detailed list of “depredations committed on their property by our Citizens” on behalf of the Indians near his Piqua agency in 1827.54 The Seneca Captain Smith claimed $35 for a horse stolen; John Sky, $65 for one horse shot and another stolen; Blue Jacket’s Daughter demanded $35 for a horse stolen; others listed saddles taken by Euroamericans and horses and cows stolen, shot, or killed by the same, and money, furs, blankets, and a kettle stolen.55 The goods ultimately totaled just over $1,000—a debt Johnston forwarded on to the U.S. government on behalf of the mostly Senecas and Shawnees near Piqua.56 The agent performed this duty out of a concern for “the loss of their confidence in the justice of the United States,” and such work served both his own interests and those of the Indians near his agency.57 Indeed, it appears that the act of claiming damages against Euroamericans became so common that, by 1828, Johnston needed to make clear to McKenney that a “list of Claims of Shawanoese who have emigrated from Ohio west of the Mississippi” were “unfounded and ought not to be paid.”58 The requests reveal Piqua-area Indians’ recognition that cultivating a close relationship with Johnston offered a means both to make claims upon the U.S. state and secure redress. Such claims could, however, prove to be a double-edged sword. Johnston fought for Senecas and Shawnees’ property rights, but he also advocated for their removal as a direct result of the damages suffered upon the Indians near 53

Johnston, John, to Thomas L. McKenney. Wapaghkonetta, July 18, 1825 (from National Archives, RG 75. Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Letters Received Piqua Agency 1825. (Roll #3, Ohio Historical Society)), Shawnee File, Box # 8029, Folder 1 of 1 (1825–1826), Ethnohistory File, IU. 54 Johnston, John to Thomas L. McKenney Piqua, February 20, 1827 (with enclosures), Collection Archives, RG 75. Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Letters Received Piqua Agency 1827. (Roll #3, Ohio Historical Society), Shawnee File, Box #8029, Folder 1 of 1 (1827–1828), Ethnohistory Collection, IU. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 John Johnston to Thomas L. McKenney, January 17, 1828 (from National Archives, RG 75. Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Letters Received Piqua Agency 1828. (Roll #3, Ohio Historical Society)), Shawnee File, Box #8029, Folder 1 of 1 (1827–1828), Ethnohistory Collection, IU.

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his agency. Immediately following his recommendation that Piqua-area Indians receive compensation, he wrote, “[t]hese evils and a multitude of others which readily occur to your mind are rapidly encreasing upon us, and after a considerable part of my life spent managing this description of persons I am free to declare, that in my judgment there is no adequate remedy but r­ emoval to a Country of their own, where a suitable Government could be established over them.”59 Native peoples’ authority—and, indeed, the political act of ­remaining—often encouraged their removal from eastern lands. Though Indians’ claims making produced mixed consequences, it nonetheless reveals the extent to which Native peoples engaged with the politics and strategies embraced by U.S. citizens more broadly. Petitioning formed a political bond between petitioner and the state, and oftentimes, Native peoples living in the Ohio Country or who migrated from that region employed the tools of petition writing and claims making. The mission complex in the Ohio Country thus offered material benefits to the region’s indigenous peoples, and it also offered a means by which Shawnees, Miamis, Stockbridges, and their neighbors could make claims upon the federal state after the War of 1812. A discourse of civilization increasingly intersected with discourses of rights and nation to create a complicated nexus of ideas that both rendered Native peoples further intertwined with emerging U.S. intellectual currents and offered them opportunities to manipulate policies to their advantage. Such strategies reveal the ways in which Native peoples adjusted to life in the increasingly populated Ohio Country: as Euroamerican immigrants struggled to make a living in a new land, Native peoples confronted similar problems of money, work, land, and survival in a rapidly changing economy.

…

When Hugh McKeen declared in 1826 that the Miamis were a “damnd rebelious race,” he expressed frustration at their unwillingness to disappear from the Ohio Country on Americans’ terms. That he wrote the statement with Richardville in mind is not surprising. The Miami leader was, in many ways, the exemplar of what many considered to be indigenous rebellion in the early years of American empire. Richardville, along with Shawnees at Wapakoneta, Delawares and Senecas near Piqua, and others who dared remain in the r­ egion, 59

John Johnston to Thomas L. McKenney Piqua, February 20, 1827 (with enclosures) (from National Archives, RG 75. Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Letters Received Piqua Agency 1827. (Roll #3, Ohio Historical Society)), Shawnee File, Box #8029, Folder 1 of 1 (1827–1828), Ethnohistory Collection, IU.

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turned U.S. imperial rhetoric and policies on their head and adopted and adapted to civilizing policies and the economic, political, and social relations established by the mission complex. They took part in an imperial struggle on Americans’ terms, but they eked out victories that frustrated U.S. attempts to take the region by force or for no financial compensation or simply entirely on the state’s own terms. When Wapakoneta debtors ruined George Johnston’s finances, they secured items that made their own lives just a little bit better, and they did so on their own terms by partially paying off debts through barter of furs and by becoming economically-savvy neighbors in the midst of a population that sought their physical and cultural removal. When Native individuals and nations petitioned for economic redress, they invested the federal state with authority, but they also forced government officials to fulfill economic and political obligations that drew upon indigenous peoples’ understandings of reciprocity and political alliance. They secured, in some cases, funds and goods that frustrated, at least in the short term, Ohio Country Euroamericans’ attempts to drive them off their lands. Ohio Country Indian leaders and peoples, then, ultimately used the tools available to them—including the labor and connections that Friends offered—and they ensured that they continued to exercise their power to shape their own lives and also to mold the contours of American imperial policy and the U.S. market economy and state.

Chapter 12

Remembering and Forgetting – Local History and the Kin of Paul Cuffe in an Upper Canadian Quaker Community Mary Beth Start This short history is given By one of Gardners sons who feeling it his duty to let the name of his farther[sic] be placed on the pages of history. . . . As a son of an amiable Mother I feel it my duty to record her name with my farthers[sic] and the Rest of the family. She was the daughter of David Cuffe and grand daughter of Cuffe Slocum. . . . I clame[sic] relation on my Mothers side to Cuff Slocum and to Paul Cuffe and to all on the side of Both farther[sic] and Mother. gardner wainer Jr., circa 1851, New Bedford, Massachusetts (formerly of ­Norwich, Ontario, Canada).1

∵ This paper is a history of the extended Wainer family in Norwich, Ontario, Canada – adherents of Quakerism and individuals with both Indigenous and African ancestries. Like Paul Cuffe, they are the descendants of Ruth Moses, a Wampanoag woman of Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts,2 and Kofi Slocum, a man understood to be of Akan ancestry who, in the 1720s, arrived in Rhode Island at the hands of the Atlantic slave trade.3 They are the 1 Gardner Wainer Jr., “Wainer Family,” 1851; Paul Cuffe Collection; New Bedford Free Public Library (nbfpl); New Bedford, Massachusetts. 2 Sheldon H. Harris, Paul Cuffe: Black America and the African Return (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 15; Judy Kertesz, “‘And Mustee Is My Nation’: Reflections on Narrating Contestable Identities,” Paper presented at IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas Symposium, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C., November 2009, available at www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/indivisible/symposium.html; and, Daniel R. Mandell, “Shifting Boundaries of Race and Ethnicity: Indian-Black Intermarriage in Southern New England, 1760–1880,” The Journal of American History 85, 2 (September 1998): 486. 3 Lamont D. Thomas, Rise to Be a People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe (Chicago: University of ­Illinois Press, 1986), 3; and, Rosalind Cobb Wiggins, Captain Paul Cuffe’s Logs and Letters, © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_013

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children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Paul Cuffe’s sister, Mary Slocum Cuffe, and her husband, Michael Wainer. This essay positions their history against the backdrop of Norwich’s longstanding Quaker-focused historical narrative – a narrative in which substantial aspects of the community’s past are consistently overlooked. In that light, it restores the Wainer family to Norwich’s local history and connects significant evidence of their lives in Massachusetts, New York, and Upper Canada. A detailed study of this particular extended family facilitates a more nuanced rendering of the past as it played out in one Upper Canadian Quaker community. In an effort to restore a more complete vision of Norwich’s Quaker history, this paper traces material remnants of the Wainer family’s past even when the details those remnants reveal appear inconsistent, contradictory, and incongruous. The complexity of their past is demonstrated by their multiple and varied associations, glimpses of which are revealed in the material record. They were Quaker adherents of both Indigenous and African ancestries; and their complicated and overlapping realities challenge historical analysis and its preference for clean categories and sweeping narratives.4 This paper interprets local historical memory as one legacy of relations between Quakers and Indigenous peoples in North America. As Anna Haebich claims, “forgetting and ignorance are never benign conditions: they do things. Ignorance breeds in a forgetful climate of not knowing by bestowing value on misinformation and failing to question its veracity or authority.”5 Even if the motivations and processes behind forgetting are unintentional, its legacy is substantial. In the specific case of Norwich, a study of the extended Wainer family provides an opportunity to restore suppressed and obscured details of the community’s past and to interrogate one family’s longstanding exclusion from its Quaker-focused historical narrative. In framing that legacy of local historical memory in the case of Norwich, this chapter will first trace the development of that Quaker-focused historical narrative and address aspects of the past that it consistently overlooks. Against that backdrop it will acknowledge both the Indigenous and African ancestries of the Wainer family, recognize them as members of the Religious Society of Friends, and establish their specific connection to Norwich’s Quaker community. 1808–1817: A Black Quaker’s “Voice from within the Veil” (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1996), 46. See also, Kathryn Grover, The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and ­Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 45–46. 4 Kertesz, “And Mustee Is My Nation.” 5 Anna Haebich, “Forgetting Indigenous Histories: Cases from the History of Australia’s Stolen Generation,” Journal of Social History 44, 4 (Summer 2011): 1035.

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The Backdrop of the Norwich Narrative

Traced back over two centuries to its earliest Quaker arrivals, Norwich’s historical narrative preserves and perpetuates a vision of its past that omits unpleasant and divisive details in favour of a preferred memory of the Quakerism of its founding. This preferred Quaker-focused narrative, produced by several generations of local historians, demonstrates how a duality of remembering and forgetting has lowered a veil of obscurity on generations of the Wainer family. These local historians made decisions, consciously or otherwise, about what details of the past were worthy of recognition and what details they would leave unaddressed. Another subtler duality comes into view when their preferred narrative is considered alongside the documents and materials they collected and preserved. In one sense, these local historians are perpetrators of widespread forgetting in their insistence on a preferred Quaker-focused narrative. Yet, simultaneously, through their work to ensure the survival of material and documentary records, they are the guarantors of a preserved past that includes the details they chose to leave untold. Remnants of Norwich’s past persist in part as a result of the foresight of local historians. Nonetheless, it is the historical narrative they produced and presented to the wider public that is most far-reaching in effect. Their Quaker-focused narrative has so deeply permeated the community’s historical awareness as to influence, overshadow, and diminish in relevance the restoration of details of other diverse pasts. Theirs is a narrative that continues to be presented with little meaningful assessment of its origin or questioning of its content. Two seminal studies of objects and stories in New England’s historical narrative recognize this duality. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich demonstrates that nineteenth-­century New Englanders were behind the preservation of important evidence of the local and national past while also contributing to the construction of a sweeping and persistent historical narrative. As such, Ulrich claims, “their contributions are too important to be forgotten and their questions and assumptions still too much with us to be left unchallenged.”6 Jean M. O’Brien’s work extends this notion when she asserts that, “their publications formed a vernacular historical sensibility of enduring influence, as their work, however fanciful or downright erroneous, became blueprints for understanding the past.”7 In O’Brien’s perspective, these local history texts came to 6 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), 37. 7 Jean M. O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), vxii.

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“­constitute a vital vernacular history,” one that ultimately served to ground broad notions of American history and identity in the accessible and tangible local landscape.8 A consideration of Norwich’s persistent local narrative alongside the details that have been suppressed in its telling – while maintaining an awareness that the local historians responsible for a narrative of forgetting are the same individuals who ensured the continued existence of primary evidence of the past – adds critical nuance to the interpretation of local historical memory as one legacy of relations between Quakers and Indigenous peoples. By tracing the roots of local history work in Canada, with a view to understanding something of the trajectory and power of both the interpretive and preservation work of local historians over two centuries, it is possible to balance this seemingly irreconcilable duality. Essential to understanding their unique approach to historical inquiry is an acknowledgement that two distinct forms of historical work emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth c­ enturies – one local and one academic.9 As the new academic discipline strove with increasing vigor to distinguish itself from its amateur counterpart, it came to dictate both who was qualified to study and write about the past and what topics and themes were deemed worthy of such attention.10 In their discussion of history’s professionalization, Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier note that, prior to this shift, “the past was a close-by, accessible place, not a distant time” and that, following the establishment of history as an academic discipline, “historians [within the academy] came to treat the past as a far-away and alien culture.”11 At the same time, local historians continued to seriously study, preserve, and present history, while coveting a direct personal link to the past, something they considered essential to preventing it ever becoming a 8 O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting, xiii. 9 See Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing since 1900 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986); Beverly Boutilier and Alison Prentice, eds. Creating Historical Memory: English-Canadian Women and the Work of History (Vancouver: ubc Press, 1997); Gerald Killan, Preserving Ontario’s Heritage: A History of the Ontario Historical Society (Ottawa: Ontario Historical Society, 1976); Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998); Donald Wright, The Professionalization of History in English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). For examples of this distinction see D.C. Harvey, “The Importance of Local History in the Writing of General History,” Canadian Historical Review 13, 3 (September 1932): 244–251; and, Lady Tweedsmuir, “The Amateur Historian,” Canadian Historical Review 20, 1 (March 1939): 1–3. 10 Smith, 104–5. 11 Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2001), 12.

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distant or foreign place. An acknowledgement of this divergence of local and academic history from a shared origin recognizes that the work of local historians is deserving of historiographical analysis. Otherwise, their often-valuable contributions are overlooked, their interpretive framework misunderstood or distorted, and their wide-reaching influence over the general public ignored. When the work of local historians is framed as historiography – as a way of thinking about, interpreting, and constructing history – rather than simply as a source of verifiable facts, it offers a more meaningful context in which to trace both the lineage and influence of their work.12 Interest in the preservation of details of Norwich’s history can be traced to its earliest Quaker settlers, with evidence of substantive historical knowledge and preservation efforts demonstrating a significant and continuous link with their past. In this case, a specific desire to collect and preserve information related to their familial ancestries was built upon longstanding tradition. In this established practice of looking to one’s familial past we find the roots of this community’s persistent Quaker-focused historical narrative. Evidence exists that Peter Lossing, the accredited founder of the Norwich Quaker community, gathered significant information related to the history of his family which he passed on to younger family members. An 1848 letter from Benson J. Lossing13 to his cousin, Paulina Lossing Howard Southwick, transcribes information about their family’s ancestry from an 1831 letter composed by her father, Peter. Benson’s transcription demonstrates that the 1831 letter included information passed orally from earlier generations and that it made clear mention of specific physical documents. The very writing of this letter 12

13

See Julie Cruickshank, “Discovery of Gold in the Klondike: Perspectives from Oral Traditions,” in Reading Beyond Words: Contexts for Native History, ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 1996), 435. In a discussion of how to appropriately conceptualize oral traditions, Cruickshank identifies how the discipline of history’s roots in ideals of objectivity continues to cloud our understanding of the nature of these sources. According to Cruickshank, “neither oral nor written versions [of past occurrences] can be treated simply as historical evidence to be sifted for ‘facts’ . . . instead, both of them have to be understood as windows on the way the past is constructed and discussed in different contexts, from the perspective of actors enmeshed in culturally distinct networks of social relationships.” Lossing was an esteemed American historian and woodcutter. See Benson J. Lossing’s The Pictorial Field-Book of the Civil War in the United States of America, Three Volumes in One (Hartford: T. Belknap Publisher, 1874); The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution; of Illustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics, and Traditions of the War of Independence, In Two Volumes (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1860); The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812; or Illustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics, and Traditions of the Last War for American Independence (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1869).

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suggests that Peter Lossing held a genuine interest in his familial past, that he made efforts to ensure the preservation of his knowledge beyond his own lifetime, and that he understood that the existence of concrete physical evidence legitimized his more personal recollections.14 In her own unique way, Paulina continued her father’s interest in and concern for preserving details of the past. She initiated among her female offspring a tradition of contributing artifacts, pictures, and notes to a “treasured scrap box” which was passed from generation to generation for nearly two centuries.15 One of Paulina’s descendants, Alice Treffry, also continued the family’s tradition of connecting to and preserving the past. As a member of Norwich’s 1910 centenary committee, Alice assumed the lead in organizing a museum exhibit and, through that position, ensured that the community’s Quaker history would be central to its hundredth anniversary celebrations.16 Residents were encouraged to contribute family artifacts to that first museum exhibit;17 and this display of heirlooms, collected and preserved by different families, encouraged residents to see their personal connections to the past as part of a shared historical narrative – a narrative that emphasized the community’s Quaker roots. Twenty years later, Alice Treffry was at the centre of a more formalized effort to preserve her community’s history. In Alice’s home, on April 19, 1930, “a representative group of the descendants of the pioneers of the original Norwich township met . . . to form an historical society.”18 The founding of the Norwich Pioneers reveals a distinct desire on the part of local historians to maintain a close and concrete connection to the past. Stella Mott, a founding member and prominent local historian, articulated their motivation: There are living today in our township a large number of descendants of the earliest families and many who have known and remember well some of the earliest pioneers. While these are still with us it seems an appropriate time to undertake a thorough study of the history of North 14 15

16 17 18

Benson J. Lossing to Paulina Southwick (nee Lossing, nee Howard), June 17, 1848; Lossing Family Files; Norwich and District Historical Society (ndhs) Archives; Norwich, Ontario. Jen Jolliffe, Deed of Gift – Jen Jolliffe, Paulina Southwick Snuff Box, July 29, 2008; Collection Records; ndhs Museum. The scrap box was a gift to ‘Polina’[sic] Southwick from Abigail Lossing. The scrap box, along with its contents, was subsequently passed from Paulina Southwick to Augusta Southwick Marshall to Janet Anne Marshall Estabrook to Alice Estabrook Simpson to Pauline Simpson Jolliffe to Jen Jolliffe. “A Great Success,” Norwich Gazette, July 7, 1910. “Centenary Notes,” Norwich Gazette, April 28, 1910. Stella Mott, “Norwich Pioneers;” Stella Mott Collection (smc), Series B; ndhs Archives.

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and South Norwich and the villages within the borders. To further this research work . . . an Historical Society to be known as ‘The Norwich Pioneers’ has been formed.19 This intimate connection to the past is also demonstrated in the organization’s structure. Its composition included an executive committee dominated by descendants of local founding families and an honorary consulting board comprised of the community’s most senior residents.20 Its founding members were either descendants of or themselves practicing Quakers; and together they represented every distinct faction of the Religious Society of Friends to have practiced in the Norwich area.21 In the founding of the Norwich Pioneers we see a group of individuals bringing together their personal connections to the past in an effort to merge their distinct remembrances into a single shared community history. For those founding members, Quakerism was that link to a common past. David Thelen’s article “Memory and American History,” with its consideration of memory construction, adds a subtle and important layer to an analysis of the Norwich Pioneers. Thelen states that “memory, private and individual as much as collective and cultural, is constructed, not reproduced. . . . this construction is not made in isolation but in conversations with others that occur in the contexts of community, broader politics, and social dynamics.”22 When a consideration of memory is broadened beyond a system of straightforward recall to a process of active and new construction through association, it can tease out a clarified understanding of how a specific local history has been constructed and preserved. For the founding members of the Norwich Pioneers, who hailed from vastly distinct branches of the Religious Society of Friends, an intentional focus on the Quakerism of the community’s 1810 founding provided the common ground on which their individual remembrances and personal connections to the past could establish a shared community history.23 19 20 21

22 23

Mott, “Note;” smc, Series B; ndhs Archives. Mott, “Note;” Mott, “Norwich Pioneers.” Multiple factions of the Religious Society of Friends have been represented within the Township of Norwich throughout its 200-year history. Slightly different versions of Quakerism were practiced within the community’s multiple meeting houses (including: ­Gurneyite, Hicksite, Orthodox, Conservative, Wilburite, and Evangelical). See Arthur G. Dorland, The Quakers in Canada, A History (Toronto: The Ryerson University Press, 1968). David Thelen, “Memory and American History,” The Journal of American History 75, 4 (March 1989): 1119. See Arthur G. Dorland, Recent Developments in Canadian Quakerism (Toronto: Canada Yearly Meeting, 1960), 1–3. Dorland outlines changes within the Canadian Quaker

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As a founding member and the Norwich Pioneers’ archivist, as well as a freelance writer and teacher, Stella Mott was at the centre of Norwich’s collecting efforts and positioned herself as an important chronicler of the emerging Quaker-focused narrative. True to Norwich’s local history tradition, Mott connected herself personally to its past through her ancestry, incorporating her grandfather’s reminiscences in her writing. Late in his life, Moses Mott recorded his memory of the family’s 1810 journey from Dutchess County, New York to Norwich Township.24 In her own writing and in the records she collected, Stella chronicled Norwich’s Quaker roots by placing her personal ancestry firmly within its fold.25 She portrays an idyllic Quaker heritage, one that presumes and emphasizes an integrity of religious belief and practice among the community’s founders. In Stella’s portrayals, the divisive reality of ­nineteenth-century Quakerism is disregarded in favour of her vision of a peaceful, intelligent, benevolent and unified religious sect. This local history lineage establishes that an early interest in preserving details of the past arrived alongside Norwich’s first Quaker settlers. When the context of the Wainer family in Norwich is considered, this lineage of local ­historians  – collecting records and constructing intentional narratives – ­reveals the dual legacy of remembering and forgetting. Their telling, which stretches back over two centuries, continues to be presented today with little meaningful assessment of its origin or questioning of its content. That preferred Quaker-focused historical narrative acutely illustrates the power of Anna Haebich’s assertion that “ignorance breeds in a forgetful climate of not knowing by bestowing value on misinformation and failing to question its veracity or authority.”26 2

The Wainer Family in the Norwich Record

The extended Wainer family has always been present in the dual legacy of Norwich’s local history. Their names have been transcribed into government documents, recorded in the diaries and daybooks of their neighbours, and

24 25

26

c­ ommunity from the late 1920s through to 1955 and the coming together of three distinct branches of Canadian Friends as a United Yearly Meeting. Moses Mott, “Moses Mott Letter,” July 1885; Mott Special Family File; ndhs Archives. Stella Mott, “21-Day Trek From Dutchess County, N.Y. Brought First Norwich Settlers in 1809,” in Fred Landon, Oxford County Clippings; Regional Collection; University of Western Ontario; copy in Local History Collection; Woodstock Public Library; Woodstock, Ontario. Haebich, “Forgetting Indigenous Histories,” 1035.

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etched into gravestones. Yet, the Wainers have been overlooked, even erased. The pages on which their names were scrawled are stowed away in archives and private collections; the contents of these primary documents are rarely consulted or included in local narratives; in many cases, even their gravestones have been permanently removed from the landscape. Rare instances in which the family has been acknowledged, however, marginally, rely on the extrapolation of anecdotal evidence for substance. Assumptions have thereby gained credence, misrepresentations abound, and the true complexity of the past has been pushed aside in favour of the supposed consistency afforded by a longprivileged narrative. Despite the marked forgetting of this family, its members have been included, though often inaccurately, in individual remembrances and in public historical narratives. One individual remembrance that incorporates members of the Wainer family appears in a Moore family genealogical scrapbook.27 A letter written by Jerry Wayner[sic] to Charles Moore on February 15, 1920 anchors a personal recollection of one of Charles Moore’s descendants. The letter records Jerry’s concern for his aged father, Albert Wayner[sic], and requests the aid of Charles Moore in ensuring adequate care for the old man.28 Accompanying the transcription of the original letter is a presumed history of the Wainer family which states, “My belief is that Al’s father Jeremiah Wayner[sic] was an escaped slave although I do not know this as absolute fact. Jeremiah acted as a lay preacher among the local blacks.”29 Both the text of the transcribed letter and a corresponding description of Albert Wayner’s[sic] circumstances at the time of its composition document specific details of his life. At the time of this letter he was completely destitute and too feeble to work. . . . a few racists in Otterville tried to have old Al arrested as a vagrant despite the fact that he owned his own home and my father had intervened on his behalf. By 1920 there was an agitation by a few to have him removed to the house of refuge. Al died not too long after.30 This inclusion of members of the Wainer family in a Quaker descendant’s personal family history again demonstrates the duality of local history remembering: the preservation of details of diverse pasts within the construct of a Quaker-focused narrative. 27 28 29 30

Moore Family Genealogical Scrapbook; ndhs Archives. Jerry Wayner to Charles Moore, February 15, 1920; Moore Scrapbook; ndhs Archives. Moore Scrapbook; ndhs Archives. Moore Scrapbook; ndhs Archives.

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The first local history publication to include more than a passing mention of the Wainers was South of Sodom: The History of South Norwich31 published in 1983 by the recently formed South Norwich Historical Society. This organization was founded with a mandate to research, collect, and preserve the distinct history of the former South Norwich Township, which they perceived as missing from the Quaker-focused narrative by then well established by the Norwich Pioneers and their successors.32 In 2006, this group published A Safe Haven: The Story of the Black Settlers of Oxford County, the first real attempt to uncover a long-overlooked segment of the community’s past. It locates members of the Wainer family in local archival records and offers some detail of their residency in the Township of Norwich.33 Both South of Sodom and A Safe Haven were intended to expand Norwich’s historical narrative through the inclusion of multiple localities and diverse populations. Yet even these publications, produced with the goal of bringing to light long-shadowed segments of the local past, have been influenced by the dominant narrative and can be seen to perpetuate many of its elements. Still central today to all local histories of the Norwich area is that long-perpetuated narrative, which continues to look to the Quakerism of the community’s 1810 founding and, from that vantage point, to present an imagined vision of the past. South of Sodom and A Safe Haven form an important extension of local history’s treatment of Quakers and other populations in the Norwich area. In particular, they expand upon local interpretations of Quakerism by including significant information related to abolitionist activities and concerns. Yet, simultaneously, they adhere to the central tenets of the long-established local narrative of a peaceful, intelligent, benevolent, and unified religious sect. In light of J. William Frost’s warning against assuming the existence of a uniform Quakerism – that, “historians need to be careful to recognize the diversity of Friends over time,”34 so as not to misrepresent and misinterpret the past – ­Norwich’s narrative demonstrates a distinct, deliberate, and pervasive 31 32

33 34

South Norwich Historical Society, ed., South of Sodom: The History of South Norwich (­Otterville, Ontario: South Norwich Historical Society, 1983). The boundaries of the Township of Norwich have changed over its 200-year history. It began as Norwich Township, but in 1855 was divided into separate North and South Norwich Townships. In 1975 East Oxford, North Norwich, and South Norwich were amalgamated into the current Township of Norwich. Joyce A. Pettigrew, A Safe Haven: The Story of the Black Settlers of Oxford County (Otterville, Ontario: South Norwich Historical Society, 2006). J. William Frost, “Why Quakers and Slavery? Why Not More Quakers?” in Quakers and Abolition, ed. Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 29.

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d­ isregard for its nuances. Its historical memory revolves around a preferred vision of a singular and static Quaker past, a vision which deliberately ignores later discord and division within the Society of Friends. A careful examination of the extended Wainer family – one that reveals contradictions and hints at an almost inconceivable complexity in their lived experiences – makes palpable the legacy of forgetting that permeates this preferred local vision of a Quaker past. The outright forgetting that occurs when the Wainers are omitted from the Quaker-focused narrative is problematic; however, more destructive is the forgetting that occurs when the family is made to fit into this pre-existing narrative. When the Wainers’ multiple experiences are manipulated to fit the community’s dominant narrative – a narrative that interprets Quakerism as the core of its history and looks to this foundational narrative to understand the Wainers’ place in it – much of their experience continues to be forgotten, while their slight inclusion supports the illusion of a comprehensive and inclusive local chronicling. South of Sodom and A Safe Haven interpret the Wainer family as members of a larger contingent of African-American settlers who migrated from the United States to Upper Canada during the mid-1800s to escape gross discrimination35 and to either gain freedom or ensure its continuation,36 an interpretation which upholds Quakerism as an explanation. Rather than viewed as a lens through which to query the past, Quakerism becomes the answer. Norwich’s Quakers are thus defined and accepted as abolitionists and, in turn, the Wainers are defined and accepted as an African-American family who migrate out of fear to a welcoming Canadian Quaker community. The Wainers’ past is thereby made to adhere to generalizations about both Quakers and African-American migrants to Upper Canada. In this case, local history ascribes to the Wainers a specific identity: downtrodden and disadvantaged recipients of Quaker benevolence. As a result, their more complicated, overlapping, and astonishing realities as practicing Quakers themselves and as individuals with both Indigenous and African ancestries are forgotten, completely omitted from the local telling of their past. Misrepresentation of the Norwich area’s Indigenous past stretches beyond its ignorance of the Wainer family’s Indigenous ancestry. The area’s Indigenous past is interpreted separately from the rest of its history and focuses almost solely on archaeological evidence excavated in two twentieth-­century digs of pre-contact Iroquoian village sites dated between 900–1250 CE.37 35 South Norwich Historical Society, ed. South of Sodom, 32. 36 Pettigrew, Safe Haven, 28–29. 37 In 1920 William J. Wintemberg, later the Associate Archaeologist at the National Museum of Canada, excavated the Uren village site. In 1977 Milt Wright, a doctoral candidate,

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The  ­Indigenous past revealed through these excavations is largely omitted from the Norwich Pioneers’ telling of local history despite the incorporation of objects from these sites in their artifact collection. The area’s Indigenous past is presented as completely unrelated to its history of Quaker settlement. The timing of these excavations, one prior to the formation of the Norwich Pioneers and the other subsequent to the entrenchment of a Quaker-focused narrative, as well as their geographical location in a portion of the Township of Norwich viewed by local historians as peripheral to the preferred Quaker narrative, may partially explain this omission; but it is inadequate. References to Indigenous-settler interactions and Indigenous presence in the area after the 1810 arrival of the Quakers do appear in the historical record. The previously referenced 1885 Moses Mott letter records encounters with Indigenous individuals near the Genesee River in New York State and at various places in Upper Canada between the Niagara and Grand Rivers. In the letter Moses also reminisces about Indigenous activities in the Norwich area during the War of 1812. There were but few settlers scattered through the woods and plenty of Indians hunting all over the place. Sometimes the settlers felt afraid the Indians might do them injury, as we often saw them with their faces painted in streaks of red and black, and acting somewhat fierce, but they never harmed any settlers or their property in the least.38 These details are among those which Moses Mott’s granddaughter, Stella, later incorporated into her chronicling of Norwich history. Both Moses’ letter and Stella’s subsequent public dissemination of its contents are significant. They demonstrate that Norwich’s early Quaker settlers and their descendants were aware of Indigenous occupation and continued use of the lands upon which they had settled in the early nineteenth century. A very specific description appears in South of Sodom’s introductory chapter, “Pre-History,” without accompanying information relative to its provenance: There are numerous brief nineteenth century reports by European settlers concerning transient Native activities. Typical of these are Mrs. Saline Mahoney’s observations that “the place was alive with Indians” and that in the early days, Indians lived in bark huts along Plum Creek

38

e­ xcavated the DeWaele site. See Diamond Jenness, “William J. Wintemberg, 1876–1941,” American Antiquity 7, 1 (July 1941): 65; and, Brian McAndrew, “They’re stalking 700-year legend at village site,” Woodstock Sentinel Review, July 19, 1977. Moses Mott, “Moses Mott Letter.”

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b­ etween Springford and Otterville. She notes that these Native people were friendly, trading game for potatoes and other vegetables. The children of white settlers and of the Indians regularly played together, each learning from the other. But as the number of settlers increased, game became scarce and the Indians moved on.39 The inclusion of even this brief information, describing cohabitation of Indigenous and settler families and their interactions in a chapter entitled “Pre-History,” is indicative of the broader treatment of Indigenous history in Norwich’s record. Both Moses Mott’s letter and South of Sodom’s “Pre-History” chapter imply Indigenous disappearance. These excerpts are representative of how Indigenous presence has been subtly, yet decidedly, written out of Norwich’s history: the chroniclers simply decided there was nothing to tell. These chroniclers are part of a larger North American phenomenon that has obscured the Indigenous ancestry of the extended Wainer family. Judy Kertesz explores this phenomenon in her talk, “‘And Mustee Is My Nation’: Reflections on Narrating Contestable Identities,” given at the symposium for the Smithsonian exhibit, IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas, in which she analyzes the evolving nature of historical representations of two exceptional individuals – Crispus Attucks and Paul Cuffe. For New Englanders of the 1830s especially, the memory of a vanished race of people was already distant. Indians were a barely recalled memory. The Indian removals of the American south now also permitted all ­Americans to imagine that Indians were gradually being pushed westward and, like the wilderness with which they were long associated, vanquished. Put simply – by the 1830s, according to well-established ­constructions of race, Indians as peoples were simply not viable.40 Kertesz’s description of the atmosphere in which African-American abolitionists came to control the narratives of both Crispus Attucks and Paul Cuffe41 parallels the local construction of the history of Cuffe’s Canadian relations: the Wainer family’s African ancestry was given such prominence that their Indigenous lineage was obscured and neglected. The motivation behind these constructions and the atmosphere in which they occurred may differ fundamentally; the result, though, is the same – the erasure of an Indigenous past. 39 40 41

South Norwich Historical Society, ed., South of Sodom, 9. Kertesz, “And Mustee Is My Nation.” Kertesz, “And Mustee Is My Nation.”

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In the case of Norwich, it has largely been shrouded by the emerging Quaker memory. As a result, the Wainers’ Indigenous ancestry has never been recognized in the local narrative; even today it is overlooked and, thereby, forgotten. Kertesz’s analysis is enormously relevant as this study of Norwich’s local history lineage reaches back to its earliest Quaker arrivals, who themselves had longstanding roots in the northeastern United States. That relevance becomes unequivocal when the Wainer family’s roots intersect with Paul Cuffe’s in New England. Their common progenitors were Ruth Moses and Kofi Slocum: a Wampanoag woman from Aquinnah, Martha’s Vineyard,42 and a man believed to be of Akan ancestry43 who was brought to North America in the 1720s where he was enslaved by Ebenezer Slocum, a Quaker in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.44 3

Toward a History of the Extended Wainer Family in Norwich

Titled with Paul Cuffe’s words,45 “‘And Mustee Is My Nation’: Reflections on Narrating Contestable Identities,” Judy Kertesz’s talk insists upon the agency of individuals with both Indigenous and African ancestries to develop “strategies that enabled them to maintain and/or sever ties that bound them to more than one community.”46 Her analysis of the nineteenth-century memorialization of Crispus Attucks and Paul Cuffe by African-American abolitionists demonstrates how history co-opts this agency when it ascribes straightforward and strategic identities to people of the past. The memorialization of Attucks and Cuffe is illustrative of history’s forgetting. To counter that forgetting and to restore agency to members of the Canadian branch of the Wainer family – the descendants of Paul Cuffe’s sister, Mary Slocum Cuffe Wainer, and individuals with both Indigenous and African ancestries – it is imperative to query those remnants of their past that are left to the present. Against the backdrop of Norwich’s preferred Quaker-focused historical narrative, those remnants of the Wainers’ past restore this family’s agency in dictating their own history. The volume and variety of primary source material documenting the existence and experiences of individual members of the Wainer family is 42 Harris, Paul Cuffe: Black America and the African Return, 15; and, Mandell, “Shifting Bound­ aries of Race and Ethnicity,” 486. 43 Thomas, Rise to Be a People, 3. 44 Wiggins, Captain Paul Cuffe, 46. See also, Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, 45–46. 45 “Exercise Book and Book of Accounts of Cuffee[sic] Slocum;” Paul Cuffe Collection; nbfpl. 46 Kertesz, “And Mustee Is My Nation.”

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­ nexpected and astounding. Norwich’s local historians have presumed that lou cal research always brings increasing clarity as sources are traced forward in time; in fact, in the case of this family the opposite is true. Details of the Wainer family’s lives become increasingly clear as the available evidence is followed further into the past. Norwich’s historians have overlooked this reverse trajectory in their investigations into this family. Evidence of the Wainer family in Norwich is limited: it appears primarily in government documents, in fragmentary records kept by neighbours, and by the chance existence of grave markers embedded in the landscape. Yet, these fragments confirm that members of the Wainer family lived their lives in this community: they owned land, maintained roads, felled trees, packed butter, purchased goods, were active in school and church governance, were born, married, had children, and died.47 A much more extensive and diverse realm of information becomes visible when members of the family, and the records that document details of their lived experiences, are traced even further into the past to various locations in the United States. Here, too, details are recorded in government documents, neighbours’ records, and the chance existence of physical objects; however, here there are also documents composed entirely of their own words. In New England the Wainers appear in the extensive collections chronicling the life of Paul Cuffe.48 A comprehensive examination of this multiple and varied primary source material challenges Norwich’s preferred Quaker-focused narrative; and, through this challenge, the Wainers – adherents of Quakerism and individuals with both Indigenous and African ancestries – facilitate some restoration of an Indigenous past to Norwich’s local historical narrative. A reasonable place to begin this more complete history of Norwich’s extended Wainer family is “The Intention of Marriage Between Coffe[sic] Slocum and Ruth Moses both of Dartmouth” which was entered in the Town Book of Records on January 31, 1745.49 Their actual marriage is recorded two years later, 47

48 49

See Norwich Township Assessment Rolls, 1849; ndhs; Norwich Township Collector’s Rolls, 1842 and 1845; ndhs; Town Book; ndhs; John Treffry, “Diary of John Treffry (Senior), April 14, 1834-December 31, 1836, Norwich Township, Oxford County;” Regional Collection; University of Western Ontario; London, Ontario; William Cromwell & Sons Daybook; South Norwich Historical Society; Otterville, Ontario; John Tidey Survey Book; ndhs; and, “North American Convention Proceedings,” Voice of the Fugitive, September 24, 1851. Primary documents related to the Wainer family are found in both the Paul Cuffe Collection of the nbfpl and the Paul Cuffe Papers of the New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library (nbwm). “Intention of Marriage Between Coffe Slocum and Ruth Moses,” January 31, 1745; Paul Cuffe Collection; nbfpl.

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stating, “MOSES, Ruth, ‘indian woman,’ and Cuffe Slocum, ‘negro man,’ both of D., July 9, 1747.”50 Ruth Moses and Kofi Slocum lived on Cuttyhunk Island where they were caretakers of the Slocum farm and had ten children before returning to mainland Massachusetts in 1766 where they purchased 120 acres in the Township of Dartmouth.51 On October 11, 1772, their daughter, Mary Slocum Cuffe, married Michael Wainer,52 a man of Indigenous ancestry.53 In Living with Whales: Documents and Oral Histories of Native New England Whaling History, Nancy Shoemaker states that, though not residing on lands regarded . . . as reserved for Indians, the Wainers formed a community of Wampanoag Natives, many of whom had intermarried with Cuffes and others of African American descent. The Cuffes and Wainers were well known in the Westport-DartmouthNew Bedford area and had long made their living from maritime endeavours.54 Though the exact date is unclear, at some point during the decade following his marriage, Michael Wainer and his younger brother-in-law, Paul Cuffe, became business partners.55 It is through the family’s intimate familial and business relations with their brother-in-law and uncle, Paul Cuffe, and the subsequent preservation of his personal papers, that the Wainers come most clearly into view. The younger generation of Wainers and Cuffes were active participants in the family’s seafaring endeavours and rose in ranks to the levels of First Mate, Master, and 50 51

52 53

54 55

Vital Records of Dartmouth, Massachusetts to the Year 1850, Vol. ii – Marriages (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1930), 322 and 448. The Slocum farm was property owned by the family who had formerly enslaved Kofi Slocum. Wiggins, Captain Paul Cuffe, 47; “Deed – David Brownell to Cuff Slocum,” December 15, 1766; and, “Brothers and Sisters Agges[sic],” January 22, 1781; Paul Cuffe Collection; nbfpl. Names and birth years of Ruth Moses and Kofi Slocum’s children: David (1747), Jonathan (1749), Sarah (1751), Mary (1753), Phear (1755), John (1757), Paul (1759), Lyda (1761), Ruth (1763), Freelove (1765). Vital Records of Dartmouth, Massachusetts to the Year 1850, Vol. ii – Marriages, 448. Wiggins, 49; and, Russel Lawrence Barsh, “‘Colored’ Seamen in the New England Whaling Industry: An Afro-Indian Consortium,” in Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America, ed. James F. Brooks (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 98. Nancy Shoemaker, Living with Whales: Documents and Oral Histories of Native New England Whaling History (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 92. Barsh, “‘Colored’ Seamen,” 98; Nancy Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen and the World: Indigenous Encounters and the Contingency of Race (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 24; Wiggins, Captain Paul Cuffe, 49–50.

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Captain.56 In the 1790s, Thomas Wainer was accused of aiding in the escape of “a Negro man named HARRY”57 while conducting the family’s coastal shipping business.58 On April 26, 1799, the New-Bedford Medley published a notice stating, “Harry is supposed to be carried off by a certain Thomas Wainer . . . a Mulatto, who . . . cleared out as Capt. of a small vessel from Westport.”59 A letter addressed “brothers and sisters,” composed by Paul Cuffe, informs the family that “Capt. Jeremiah Wayner[sic] Died [at sea] the 18 of february ad 1805.”60 In 1810, Thomas Wainer was appointed Master of the brig Traveller for his uncle’s famed first voyage to Sierra Leone.61 Among the Traveller’s nine-member crew were two younger sons and the son-in-law of Mary Slocum Cuffe and Michael Wainer: John Wainer, Michael Wainer Jr., and John Marstens.62 Coinciding with the outbreak of War, the return of the Traveller from Sierre Leone in the spring of 1812 and its impounding in Newport as the result of a United States embargo on trade with England63 might be viewed as a point of transition in some of the Wainer children’s lives. In 1812 Gardner Wainer and his wife, Rhoda Cuffe,64 moved with their children away from Westport, Massachusetts and the nucleus of the extended Wainer-Cuffe family, an extended family unit that has been described as “a community of Wampanoag Natives.”65 In 1813, Gardner Wainer and Rhoda Cuffe, along with their son Michael, transferred membership in the Society of Friends from Dartmouth, Massachusetts to Scipio, New York.66 Letters exchanged between Paul Cuffe and his niece and nephew in New York State demonstrate concern for the family’s spiritual wellbeing, accompanied by broader concerns related to slavery as well as to the 56

Vital Records of Westport, Massachusetts to the Year 1850 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1918), 99. Name and birth of Mary Slocum Cuffe and Michael Wainer’s children: Thomas(1773), Gardner(1774), Paul(1776), Jeremiah(1778), David(1780), John(1782), Mary(1789), Michael(1793). 57 Samuel Sloane, “Public Notice,” New-Bedford Medley, April 26, 1799, in Grover, Fugitives Gibraltar, 70 and 72. 58 Grover, 72. 59 Sloane, “Public Notice,” New-Bedford Medley, April 26, 1799, in Grover, 70 and 72. 60 Paul Cuffe to brothers and sisters, April 11, 1805; Paul Cuffe Collection; nbfpl. 61 “Paul Cuffe’s Log Book;” Paul Cuffe Collection; nbfpl, in Wiggins, Captain Paul Cuffe, 99. 62 “Paul Cuffe’s Log Book,” in Wiggins, 99 and 129. Mary Slocum Cuffe and Michael Wainer’s daughter Mary had married John Marstens in 1809. 63 Marion Kilson, “Cuffe’s Social Networks and Entrepreneurial Success,” Exploring Paul Cuffe: The Man and His Legacy (New Bedford: New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2009), 9. 64 Gardner Wainer and Rhoda Cuffe were first cousins. 65 Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen, 92. 66 Emily Howland, “Historical Sketches of Friends in Cayuga County, N.Y., with Appendix,” in Collections of Cayuga County Historical Society, Number 2, ed. Cayuga County Historical Society (Auburn: Knapp & Peck, 1882), 73 and 88.

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Christianization of Indigenous populations in the United States. In an 1813 letter addressed to “Dear Affecunate Cousens Rhody & Gardner,” Cuffe writes, you have not stated whether true Religion flourishes in that Countery – nor whether the children of africa is Liberated from their gaulding Chains of slavery and that of our american native neighbours can be Received in full Communetity So as to Say come brother come sister let us unite in Love and go up to the house of the Lord.67 A prominent theme in the letters between Gardner Wainer and his uncle is the issue of Gardner’s financial stability, specifically in relation to his purchase of land in New York State and his remaining assets in Massachusetts. Cuffe offers guidance, and repeatedly encourages his nephew to avail himself of the advice of Friends, stating, “thee belongs to a Society that are willing to give thee good advice. I think if thee was to Call on the Monthly Meeting for advice they would be willing to Chuse a Committee for that purpose.”68 Thomas Wainer, Michael Wainer, and Mary Wainer Marstens followed their brother and sister-in-law to New York State. All members of the family who moved from Massachusetts to New York maintained regular correspondence with their uncle. Their letters record financial concerns, the death of their father and details of his will, plans to move further west than New York State, and missing the clams in Westport. There is a notable difference, though, in the letters between Paul Cuffe and Gardner Wainer and those Cuffe exchanged with Gardner’s brothers, Thomas and Michael. Cuffe’s correspondence with Gardner appears to be rooted in a shared understanding of Quakerism, whereas his correspondence with Thomas and Michael subtly conveys challenged relationships dominated by an uncle’s Quaker concern for his nephews. In an 1816 letter to Pearson Freeman, Cuffe conveyed information to an illiterate relative, Molly (Mary) Prince, then living in Vermont, about her son’s residence at Gay Head and her sister’s religious adherence. In the letter, Cuffe also responds to a query about Molly’s rights to land, informing her that her land “Still Lays under the same restrictions as all other Indian Land.” The letter also demonstrates a subtle, yet clear, distinction in his description of his Wainer nephews who had moved to New York State. “Thomas Gardner and Michael Are All gone into the Country. Gardener has gone to Cayuga Thomas and

67 68

Paul Cuffe to Rhody & Gardner Wainer, February 22, 1813; Mss 10 – Paul Cuffe Papers; nbwm. Paul Cuffe to Gardner Wainer, October 2, 1814; Mss 10 – Paul Cuffe Papers; nbwm.

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Michael has gone to Oenida[sic] Among the natives.”69 Writing to his uncle from Brother Towne[sic] in 1817, Thomas Wainer provides details of his life: “I would wish to in forme the that we have made up our minds to joine This nation.” He goes on to explain the possibility of venturing further west, stating, “I have bin a Thinking it would be best for me to go . . . and do wante your apinion on the subject soon and advise. Lidia [Thomas’ wife] think it is best for us to go on better then coming back againe.”70 Correspondence dwindles in 1817; and Paul Cuffe dies in the fall of that year.71 The families of Gardner and Thomas Wainer remained in New York State at least into the 1820s, while Michael Wainer appears to have remained there into the 1850s.72 Both Thomas and Michael appear on various maps of New Stockbridge drawn to record details of land purchased from the Stockbridge Indians by the State of New York.73 In 1826, Thomas Wainer appears in Laws of the State of New-York: “the lots of land in said New Stockbridge, set by the appraisers to the name respectively, of Thomas Wainer and William Gardner, designated as coloured men, be granted them.”74 During this period, Gardner Wainer’s family appears to move within New York State; he and his children, Michael and Ruth, transfer their Quaker membership from Scipio to Bridgewater in 1825.75 The available records suggest that, in New York State, Thomas and Michael Wainer chose to locate their families among the Stockbridge and Brothertown Nations southeast of Oneida Lake whereas Gardner Wainer associated his family predominantly with the Religious Society of Friends. In 1832, Gardner Wainer writes to his uncle John Cuffe while attending Friends Yearly Meeting in New York. “I live in Canada in the Uper province In the District of London & Town of Norwich longpoint contry up lake Ery 69 70 71 72 73

74 75

Paul Cuffe to Pearson Freeman, October 19, 1816; Mss 10 – Paul Cuffe Papers; nbwm. Thomas Wainer to Paul Cuffe, March 1, 1817; Paul Cuffe Collection; nbfpl. John Cuffe to Freelove [Slocum Cuffe], September 10, 1817; Paul Cuffe Collection; nbfpl. Michael Wainer household, 1855 Census of the Town of Stockbridge, County of Madison, New York State. Map of the Southwest Tract in New Stockbridge Purchased from the Stockbridge Indians 14th July 1819; Survey Maps of Lands in New York State, ca. 1711–1913, Series A0273–78, Map #18A; New York State Archives; Albany, New York. See also, Map of New Stockbridge, 1823; Survey Maps of Lands in New York State, ca. 1711–1913, Series A0273–78, Map 263, part 1; New York State Archives. Laws of the State of New-York, Passed at the Forty-Ninth Session of the Legislature, Begun and Held at the City of Albany, The Third day of January, 1826 (Albany: Printed by E. Croswell, Printer to the State, 1826), 36–37. “Wainer, Gardner rocf Westmoreland-Bridgewater Scipio mm with ch. Michael & Ruth 1825 6m 3d;” Records of Westmoreland Monthly Meeting and its Predecessors; Friends Historical Library Swarthmore College; Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

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80 from Buffalo & 25 Buck from the lake. I have 100 acres of land.” Gardner also offers information about his family’s circumstances: “Michale wainer [his son] was quite onwell so as to Give up work. Had a hard Cough which I am afraid he never will Recover. The Rest of my family was well I have 7 children by the last Woman 2 of which is out at work When I cam away.”76 This letter is the first reference to the Wainer family’s residency in Upper Canada and the last known document recording correspondence between the family in Upper Canada and those who remained in Massachusetts. From this point forward, sporadic references to the family preserved by Norwich’s local historians are the only known record of the Wainer family in this Upper Canadian Quaker community. Individual members of Gardner Wainer’s family appear in Norwich records beginning in 1835. In light of the local narrative’s ignorance of the Wainers’ active participation in the Society of Friends, it is striking that the first mention of the family in Norwich records is in the 1835 minutes of the Norwich Monthly Meeting of Hicksite Women Friends: “The committee to visit Rebecca Wainer inform they are not ready to make a full report.” This minute is followed with the record that “The committee to visit Rebecca Wainer report they have v­ isited her to satisfaction after a time of deliberation thereon having the concurrence of the Mens Meeting this meeting unites in receiving her into membership with us.”77 In September 1835, the same meeting records that “Bridgewater Monthly Meeting forwarded a certificate . . . on behalf of Ruth Wainer which was read and accepted bearing the date 2 mo. 10th 1833. She being deceased since the date of this certificate.”78 On September 21, 1835, members of Gardner Wainer’s family were named in the diary of a neighbour, John Treffry. The entry describes a trip to Brantford, twenty-five miles distance, where Treffry’s son “sold a forequarter [of beef] to Jerry and Gardener Weyner to be paid for in chopping at 4$ per 100 lbs.”79 It conveys the ambiguity surrounding the dates at which individual members of the extended Wainer family arrived in Norwich. A subsequent entry in Treffry’s diary records: “This morning Jeremiah and Gardener Weyner came to chop for the payment of the beef I sold them. Measured out a spot of land for them 12 Rods by 1 when John proposed to rent his house for which they value at 76 77 78 79

Gardner Wainer to John Cuffe, June 3, 1832; Paul Cuffe Collection; nbfpl. Norwich Monthly Meeting of Women Friends (Hicksite), 1819–1849; Canada Yearly Meeting Archives; Newmarket, Ontario. Rebecca Wainer was the wife of Gardner Wainer Sr. Norwich Monthly Meeting of Women Friends (Hicksite). Ruth Wainer is the daughter of Gardner Wainer Sr. Treffry, “Diary of John Treffry (Senior).” This reference could be to Gardner Wainer himself and his son Jeremiah or it may refer to another son Gardner Wainer Junior.

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5 dollars.”80 In light of the varied residency choices of the extended family in New York State, it is possible that Gardner and his second wife, Rebecca, arrived first in Norwich with their younger children, and were joined later by his older sons, Jeremiah and Gardner Jr., who may have resided temporarily at Brantford.81 The Day Book of William Cromwell and Sons, a Hicksite-owned mill store in the south part of Norwich Township, records the accounts of various members of the Wainer family in 1836 and 1837. In this document Gardner Wainer Sr.’s brother, Thomas, first appears in the Norwich records: purchasing flour, corn, and barley.82 In 1838, Thomas, Gardner, and Jeremiah are all recorded as liable for Statue Labour in the Norwich Town Book;83 and various members of the extended family, including Rebecca, Gardner, Jeremiah, Frederick B., and James, are recorded in Norwich Assessment and Collector’s Rolls throughout the 1840s.84 There is no concrete evidence of continued communication between members of the family in Canada and their relatives in New York State and Massachusetts, although the Cromwell Day Book does record Thomas Wainer paying postage on letters in 1836 and 1837.85 Despite these multiple references in Norwich records throughout the 1830s and 1840s to the children and grandchildren of Mary Slocum Cuffe and Michael Wainer of Massachusetts, by 1851, the year of Norwich’s earliest extant census, the older generation of Wainers no longer appears in Canadian records. Also by 1851, Gardner Wainer Jr. had returned to Massachusetts where he was living “south of kimptons corner” in New Bedford with his sister and brother-in-law, Rhoda Wainer Jr. and Samuel Drummonds.86 Although offering only incomplete glimpses, evidence of the extended Wainer family in Canada suggests a complex past. A truer image emerges when this complexity is chronicled with their Quaker adherence and their Indigenous and African ancestries restored to the historical record. In Living with Whales, Nancy Shoemaker states that, “historians will miss much of Native 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

Treffry, “Diary of John Treffry (Senior).” See Susan M. Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017); and, Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997). “Entry 6 mo. 9 1836,” William Cromwell & Sons Day Book. This document also records Gardner Sr., Gardner Jr., Rebecca, Naomi, James, Joseph, as well as unnamed ‘wife,’ ‘daughter,’ and ‘son.’ Town Book; ndhs Archives. Norwich Township Assessment Rolls, 1849; and Norwich Township Collector’s Rolls, 1842 and 1845. “Entry 11 mo. 10th 1836,” and “Entry 2 mo. 8th 1837,” William Cromwell & Sons Day Book. Ruth Cuffe to Joseph Congdon, February 13, 1851; File B86–33.2; nbwm.

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­ istory if they look only at documents that make an Indian presence explicit.” h Shoemaker insists that, “tracing the lives of individuals known to be Native people can open up other kinds of resources.”87 This family confirms Shoemaker’s theory. The Wainers might be considered evidentially exceptional because of their connection to Paul Cuffe and the resulting extent of available source material. However, as Shoemaker’s study of Native New England whaling history suggests, this family’s lived experiences and their movement away from their Massachusetts roots is not extraordinary. It is in this sense – of a family with both Indigenous and African ancestries traveling the world and moving away from their ancestral home, of a family whose Indigenous ancestry might not be immediately apparent in the primary source material, of a family whose Indigeneity has been forgotten by the processes of history making – that the extended Wainer family demonstrates that an extensive and complicated Indigenous history exists in North American communities such as Norwich. 4 Conclusion Hundreds of miles from Norwich, Ontario, in the extensive papers of the Paul Cuffe Collection at New Bedford’s Free Public Library – and quoted at the opening of this paper – is one last remaining contemporary reference to the m ­ embers of the extended Wainer family who made their home among the  Quakers of Upper Canada. Gardner Wainer Jr., having left Norwich and by the early 1850s residing in New Bedford, composed a detailed record of the lives of his parents, Gardner Wainer and Rhoda Cuffe, presumably at the request of Joseph Congdon, the foremost nineteenth-century chronicler of the life of Paul Cuffe. In it he described his father’s pursuit of whaling, coastal trading and farming; his parents’ migration from Westport, Massachusetts to Cayuga and later Oneida Counties, New York; and the family’s final migration to Norwich, Upper Canada. Throughout, he makes special mention of their embrace of Quakerism; and, at the end of his narrative, he traces their ancestry.88 His parents were first cousins; their children, therefore, trace their ancestry through both mother and father to Ruth Moses and Kofi Slocum. 87 Shoemaker, Living with Whales, 201. See also, Emma Rothschild, The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 7. Rothschild traces the Scottish Johnstones and through this family’s history suggests “a new kind of microhistory . . . [as] an exploration of new ways of connecting the microhistories of individuals and families to the larger scenes in which they were a part: to important or ‘macrohistorical’ inquiries.” 88 Wainer, “Wainer Family,” 1851; Paul Cuffe Collection; nbfpl.

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This  ­document makes clear the multiple and overlapping realities of this ­family. It emphasizes their Quaker heritage; and it acknowledges their African ancestry through their connection to Kofi Slocum. Also of note is Gardner’s decision to trace his African ancestry in the Wampanoag matrilineal tradition: he traces descent through the female line.89 This document is of fundamental importance to a comprehensive understanding of Norwich’s historical lineage, by making unequivocally clear that the extended Wainer family, adherents of Quakerism and individuals with both Indigenous and African ancestries, sought a direct connection to their familial past and made concerted efforts to ensure its preservation. In this regard, the records left by the Wainers are not unlike those of their Quaker neighbours at Norwich. As with the local Quaker-focused historical narrative that has forgotten them, the Wainers, too, coveted a direct personal link to the past and contributed to the preservation of their family’s history. By querying the lineage, trajectory, and continued influence of the local historical narrative – to understand the local past in light of how and by whom its narratives have been constructed over time – we gain the perspective necessary to evaluate its influence on the present. Then, against the backdrop of a longstanding Quaker-focused narrative and the aspects of the past that it consistently overlooks, the Wainer family can be restored to Norwich’s local history. Bibliography Primary Sources Unpublished

“Brothers and Sisters Agges[sic],” January 22, 1781; Paul Cuffe Collection; New Bedford Free Public Library (NBFPL); New Bedford, Massachusetts. Cuffe, John to Freelove [Slocum Cuffe], September 10, 1817; Paul Cuffe Collection; NBFPL. Cuffe, Paul to brothers and sisters, April 11, 1805; Paul Cuffe Collection; NBFPL. Cuffe, Paul to Gardner Wainer, October 2, 1814; Mss 10 – Paul Cuffe Papers; New Bedford Whaling Museum (NBWM); New Bedford, Massachusetts. Cuffe, Paul to Pearson Freeman, October 19, 1816; Mss 10 – Paul Cuffe Papers; NBWM.

89

Jace Weaver, The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000–1927 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 90; and, Kertesz, “And Mustee Is My Nation.”

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Cuffe, Paul to Rhody & Gardner Wainer, February 22, 1813; Mss 10 – Paul Cuffe Papers; NBWM. Cuffe, Ruth to Joseph Congdon, February 13, 1851; File B86–33.2; NBWM. “Deed – David Brownell to Cuff Slocum,” December 15, 1766; Paul Cuffe Collection; NBFPL. “Exercise Book and Book of Accounts of Cuffee[sic] Slocum;” Paul Cuffe Collection; NBFPL. “Intention of Marriage Between Coffe Slocum and Ruth Moses,” January 31, 1745; Paul Cuffe Collection; NBFPL. John Tidey Survey Book; Norwich and District Historical Society (NDHS) Archives; Norwich, Ontario. Lossing, Benson J. to Paulina Southwick (nee Lossing, nee Howard), June 17, 1848; Lossing Family Files; NDHS Archives. Map of New Stockbridge, 1823; Survey Maps of Lands in New York State, ca. 1711–1913, Series A0273–78, Map 263, part 1; New York State Archives; Albany, New York. Map of the Southwest Tract in New Stockbridge Purchased from the Stockbridge Indians 14th July 1819; Survey Maps of Lands in New York State, ca. 1711–1913, Series A0273–78, Map #18A; New York State Archives. Minutes, Norwich Monthly Meeting of Women Friends (Hicksite); Canada Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends Archives; Newmarket, Ontario. Mott, Moses. “Moses Mott Letter.” July 1885; Mott Special Family File; NDHS Archives. Mott, Stella. “Norwich Pioneers.” Stella Mott Collection, Series B; NDHS Archives. Mott, Stella. “Note.” Stella Mott Collection, Series B; NDHS Archives. Norwich Township Assessment Rolls, 1849; NDHS Archives. Norwich Township Collector’s Rolls, 1842 and 1845; NDHS Archives. Records of Westmoreland Monthly Meeting and its Predecessors; Friends Historical Library Swarthmore College; Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Town Book; NDHS Archives. Treffry, John. “Diary of John Treffry (Senior), April 14, 1834-December 31, 1836, Norwich Township, Oxford County.” Regional Collection; University of Western Ontario; London, Ontario. Wainer, Gardner to John Cuffe, June 3, 1832; Paul Cuffe Collection; NBFPL. Wainer, Gardner Jr., “Wainer Family,” 1851; Paul Cuffe Collection; NBFPL. Wainer, Michael household, 1855 Census of the Town of Stockbridge, County of Madison, New York State. Wainer, Thomas to Paul Cuffe, March 1, 1817; Paul Cuffe Collection; NBFPL. Wayner[sic], Jerry to Charles Moore, February 15, 1920; Moore Family Genealogical Scrapbook; NDHS Archives. William Cromwell & Sons Day Book; South Norwich Historical Society; Otterville, Ontario.

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Primary Sources Published

Harvey, D.C. “The Importance of Local History in the Writing of General History.” Canadian Historical Review 13, 3 (September 1932): 244–251. Howland, Emily. “Historical Sketches of Friends in Cayuga County, N.Y., with Appendix.” In Collections of Cayuga County Historical Society, Number 2, edited by Cayuga County Historical Society, 48–90. Auburn: Knapp & Peck, 1882. Laws of the State of New-York, Passed at the Forty-Ninth Session of the Legislature, Begun and Held at the City of Albany, The Third day of January, 1826. Albany: Printed by E. Croswell, Printer to the State, 1826. Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution; or, Illustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics, and Traditions of the War of Independence, In Two Volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1860. Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field-Book of the Civil War in the United States of America, Three Volumes in One. Hartford: T. Belknap Publisher, 1874. Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812; of Illustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics, and Traditions of the Last War for American Independence. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1869. McAndrew, Brian. “They’re stalking 700-year legend at village site.” Woodstock Sentinel Review. July 19, 1977. Mott, Stella. “21-Day Trek From Dutchess County, N.Y. Brought First Norwich Settlers in 1809.” In Oxford County Clippings, compiled by Fred Landon; Regional Collection; University of Western Ontario; copy in Local History Collection; Woodstock Public Library; Woodstock, Ontario. Norwich, Gazette. “A Great Success.” July 7, 1910. Norwich, Gazette. “Centenary Notes.” April 28, 1910. Tweedsmuir, Lady. “The Amateur Historian.” Canadian Historical Review 20, 1 (March 1939): 1–3. Voice of the Fugitive. “North American Convention Proceedings.” September 24, 1851. Vital Records of Dartmouth, Massachusetts to the Year 1850, Vol. ii – Marriages. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1930. Vital Records of Westport, Massachusetts to the Year 1850. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1918.

Secondary Sources Unpublished

Jolliffe, Jen. Deed of Gift – Jen Jolliffe, Paulina Southwick Snuff Box, July 29, 2008; Collection Records; NDHS Museum; Norwich, Ontario. Moore Family Genealogical Scrapbook; NDHS Archives.

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Barsh, Russel Lawrence. “‘Colored’ Seamen in the New England Whaling Industry: An Afro-Indian Consortium.” In Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America, edited by James F. Brooks, 76–107. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. Berger, Carl. The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing since 1900. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. Boutilier, Beverly and Alison Prentice, eds. Creating Historical Memory: English-Canadian Women and the Work of History. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997. Cruickshank, Julie. “Discovery of Gold in the Klondike: Perspectives from Oral Traditions.” In Reading Beyond Words: Contexts for Native History, edited by Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, 433–453. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 1996. Dorland, Arthur G. Recent Developments in Canadian Quakerism. Toronto: Canada Yearly Meeting, 1960. Dorland, Arthur G. The Quakers in Canada, A History. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1968. Frost, J. William. “Why Quakers and Slavery? Why Not More Quakers?” In Quakers and Abolition edited by Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank, 29–42. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Grover, Kathryn. The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001. Haebich, Anna. “Forgetting Indigenous Histories: Cases from the History of Australia’s Stolen Generation.” Journal of Social History 44, 4 (Summer 2011): 1033–1046. Harris, Sheldon H. Paul Cuffe: Black America and the African Return. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. Hill, Susan M. The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017. Howell, Martha and Walter Prevenier. From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2001. Jenness, Diamond. “William J. Wintemberg, 1876–1941.” American Antiquity 7, 1 (July 1941): 64–66. Kertesz, Judy. “‘And Mustee Is My Nation’: Reflections on Narrating Contestable Identities.” Paper presented at IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas Symposium. National Museum of the American Indian. Washington, D.C., ­November 2009, available at www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/indivisible/symposium. html. Killan, Gerald. Preserving Ontario’s Heritage: A History of the Ontario Historical Society. Ottawa: Ontario Historical Society, 1976. Kilson, Marion. “Cuffe’s Social Networks and Entrepreneurial Success.” Exploring Paul Cuffe: The Man and His Legacy. New Bedford: New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2009.

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Mandell, Daniel R. “Shifting Boundaries of Race and Ethnicity: Indian-Black Intermarriage in Southern New England, 1760–1880.” The Journal of American History 85, 2 (September 1998): 466–501. Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. O’Brien, Jean M. Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Pettigrew, Joyce A. A Safe Haven: The Story of the Black Settlers of Oxford County. Otterville, Ontario: South Norwich Historical Society, 2006. Rothschild, Emma. The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Shoemaker, Nancy. Living with Whales: Documents and Oral Histories of Native New England Whaling History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014. Shoemaker, Nancy. Native American Whalemen and the World: Indigenous Encounters and the Contingency of Race. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Smith, Bonnie G. The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998. South Norwich Historical Society, ed. South of Sodom: The History of South Norwich. Otterville, Ontario: South Norwich Historical Society, 1983. Thelen, David. “Memory and American History.” The Journal of American History 75, 4 (March 1989): 1117–1129. Thomas, Lamont D. Rise to Be a People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986. Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. New York: Vintage Books, 2001. Weaver, Jace. The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000–1927. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Wiggins, Rosalind Cobb. Captain Paul Cuffe’s Logs and Letters, 1808–1817: A Black Quaker’s “Voice from within the Veil.” Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1996. Winks, Robin W. The Blacks in Canada: A History. Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1997. Wright, Donald. The Professionalization of History in English Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.

Chapter 13

Saving Indians by Teaching Schoolgirls to Work: Quakers, the Carlisle Institute, and American Indian Assimilation* Elizabeth Thompson “Princess in Disguise” is the name which was most aptly applied to our Nettie Standing Bear by her patron last summer. This was Mrs. Holden’s first experience with a real Indian in her home and so satisfactory was this experience that hereafter “Indian” will mean to Mrs. Holden a quiet, dignified girl who knew how to fill her position … ---- Arrow and Red Man, serial publication of the Carlisle Indian Institute1

∵ Carlisle Indian Institute was the largest and most famous American Indian boarding school in the United States, and its much-celebrated capstone was its summer Outing program, which sent hundreds of its students into the countryside for the summer (or longer) to work for white families—many of them Quaker. The school’s founder, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, felt this to be the lynchpin of the school’s success because it immersed students simultaneously in Anglo-American language and culture and in manual-labor training. In fact, there were deeper, more insidious reasons for Pratt to extol the Outing program. It mounted the most complete assault on students’ former identity: not only on every vestige of connection to their tribes, their physical homelands, even their families but also more fundamentally on their capacities and on their prospects as residents of the U.S in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pratt made no secret of his desire to destroy the reservation system. But he claimed to believe in the capacity of Indian students to be equal citizens of the U.S., based on his first experience supervising incarcerated native prisoners of war at Fort Marion Prison in St. Augustine, Florida. ­Nonetheless the language * Several aspects of this chapter, including its title, depend on chapter 5 of my dissertation, The Princess, the Convert, and the Schoolgirl: American Indian Girls and Anglo Desire in American Literature, 1595–1934., (U of Tulsa PhD Dissertation, 2008). 1 Arrow and Red Man, June 7, 1918, 8. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_014

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about the program printed in the school’s newspapers reflects an intentionality about constructing them as lifelong ­laborers that’s at odds with Pratt’s claims. In the passage above, Mrs. Holden, a white employer in the ­Outing program, appropriates the title Indian princess from a much earlier era in American IndianAnglo-American relations and i­ nverts it. Nettie is a “princess in disguise,” since she bears none of the outward attributes of her literary forebears (Indian princesses who would have been associated with sovereignty and land ownership). Her nobility, instead, is rooted in her capacity to serve—to fill her position as domestic helper. The writer thus seizes an older image of Indianness—nobility—and redefines it to endorse the destiny she believed awaited contemporary Indian women: becoming life-long domestic laborers. Deemphasizing ancestral land ownership also helped facilitate the break-up of the reservation system, forcing American Indians to take private ownership of land parcels through the allotment system. Further, Indian girls were the special target of such rhetoric because, as the passage shows, it relied on nineteenth-century conceptions of Indian girls as docile and already-acculturated to assimilate students, both girls and boys. For decades, the Carlisle school newspapers used such testimonials to publicize the school’s success in Indian assimilation while simultaneously redefining white understandings of Indian prospects. What role did Quakers play in this system? They were instrumental in establishing and sustaining the Carlisle Indian Institute, which was open from 1879 to 1912 and which enrolled an estimated 8,500 or more students during that time, the majority of whom participated in the Outing program.2 The question, then, is how could Quakers have supported such an aggressive and deterministic system, given their values of pacifism, radical egalitarianism, and self-determination? To interpret their support as part of a mindset in the last quarter of the nineteenth century that was so widely accepted as to be unassailable is to let them off too easily. It’s not as though there weren’t others who did recognize—and volubly criticize—this system (Quaker Thomas A. Bland, for example). Why weren’t more Quakers critical? Were there any protests (besides Bland’s) against Pratt’s wish to annihilate all vestiges of Indian culture and family ties and to colonize Indian student interiority to the extent that it became profoundly redefined according to the assimilators’ values? This chapter focuses on exposing the subtle, insidious rhetoric in letters and school newspapers that was used—especially in connection with the Outing program—to sever Indian children from their homes and their native identities and that was as violent and destructive as any military attack. It begins to 2 Genevieve, Bell, Telling Stories Out of School: Remembering the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1879–1918. 1998. Stanford U, PhD dissertation. Bell reports that there were 18,133 known instances of student outings (figure 13, p. 409). If roughly 8,500 students attended the school, this figure would imply an average of more than two outings for each student.

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answer some of these questions, but more scholarship is needed to uncover Quaker responses—resistance to as well as participation in—Pratt’s work of cultural annihilation. 1

Strange Bedfellows

Pratt established the Carlisle Indian Institute in 1879 at the empty military barracks at Fort Carlisle in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with funds from the federal government and from private donations, many of which were Quaker.3 In The Indian Industrial School, Pratt acknowledges this support. He tells the story of a day early in the school’s history when Society of Friends members Susan and Mary Anna Longstreth of Philadelphia visited him at the school: They asked what I needed, advising I should remember that … “if thee would receive, thee must ask.” They insisted on my making a list … They took the list and went off to a window, and I heard them saying, “I will take that,” and “I will take that,” and they told me to purchase all I had placed on the list and they would send the money to pay for it … From that time both these ladies were a constant help in every time of need.4 That Pratt isolates and highlights this event reveals the respect and gratitude he felt toward Quakers as well as the degree to which he consciously partnered with them in establishing his school. He continued to receive support from Quakers in the form of financial donations, teachers in the employ of the school, and host families in the Outing program throughout the school’s duration. As he later recalled, Longstreth became an invaluable source of funding. Shortly before her death she toured the school and heard the choir singing. He writes, Our perpetual friend Miss Susan Longstreth, although a Friend [Quaker] with their peculiar views about music, was so charmed with their voices that she at one time insisted on giving the hymnals, of which we needed 500, and later when in her last illness I visited her, not long before she passed away, she asked if the Moody and Sankey hymnals were not worn 3 Barbara Landis, “About the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.” Accessed August 20, 2016. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/erdrich/boarding/carlisle.htm. See also Clyde A. Milner, ii, With Good Intentions: Quaker Work among the Pawnees, Otos, and Omahas in the 1870s (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1982), 195. 4 Captain Richard Henry Pratt, The Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Its Origin, Purpose, Progress and the Difficulties Surmounted (Carlisle, 1908), 31.

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out. I admitted that they were in a dilapidated condition, and she gave her check for $300 to replace them.5 Longstreth was a favorite but by no means Pratt’s only Quaker financial supporter. On one hand, it seems that Pratt and the Society of Friends would have made a natural alliance. Friends had become increasingly interested in Indian issues following the Civil War. In fact, according to Senator Henry Dawes, whose name in 1887 would become attached to legislation that forced reservation land ownership “in severalty,” “[The Quakers] by their labors had made the Indian problem the great issue of the time.”6 The school was located in a region of dense Quaker population, and in his work with Indians Pratt had become friends with a number of Quaker educators and agents (John D. Miles, among others). In partnering with the Society of Friends so extensively, Pratt was perhaps being influenced by President Ulysses S. Grant’s Peace Policy (1869-1877), which had sought to leverage the Quaker reputation for honest and kind dealings with the Indians by drafting them into service in the Office of Indian Affairs where they became partners with the federal government, bureaucrats, and frequently the military.7 On the other hand, even as tensions quickly arose among the disparate administrators of the Peace Policy,8 the alliance between Pratt and the Society of Friends should have been, in theory, a problematic one. First and foremost, Carlisle was a military school with military uniforms and regular drills on the parade grounds, and Pratt was a soldier. He had won the attention of his private and federal supporters through his service in the U.S. army fighting in various martial conflicts against Indians, and until his death said he “considered himself preeminently a soldier.”9 During his military years, Pratt supervised the incarceration of native prisoners of war whom he undertook to educate 5 Captain Richard Henry Pratt, Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867–1904 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 324. 6 George E. Hyde, A Sioux Chronicle (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), 152. 7 Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 53–55; Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis: Christian Reformers and the Indian, 1866–1900 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), 3–29. 8 According to a history of the Grant Peace Policy printed in The Chronicles of Oklahoma 10.2 (June 1932), “The relations between the Quakers and the military authorities were often strained.” Historian Martha Butin quotes from a letter from General John M. Schofield of the U.S. Army to Levi Woodard, Quaker agent to the Sac and Fox tribe, dated Jan. 31, 1871: “Friends are to co-operate with the military authorities as far as possible. When the policy called for by the government (requires them) to do what they are against, they can resign.” 9 Pratt, Battlefield and Classroom, xviii.

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and civilize with what many viewed as a high degree of success, leading him to establish Carlisle. Not surprisingly, military language continuously slips into ­official Carlisle documents. For example, when Carlisle student Jerome Kennerly ran away from school, he was referred to not as a runaway but as a “deserter.”10 Many writers have noted the irony of the most famous American Indian boarding school of the nineteenth century being founded by a soldier who had won distinction fighting Indians. As David Wallace Adams poignantly states, “The next campaign against the Indian, then, was to be waged in the classroom.”11 It perhaps goes without saying that such an approach should have been at odds with the pacifistic principles of the Society of Friends—as would Carlisle’s disciplinary tactics, which included at times corporal punishment, isolation, and other harsh measures. There is, in fact, evidence that the Society of Friends (Hicksite) objected to the alliance between Quakers and a military school: “The subject of our testimony [before Congress] was introduced by earnest exercises concerning … the actual use of [military] training in the Indian Industrial School at Carlisle, Pa ….We greatly regret the employment of military training in an institution intended to instruct our Indian wards in the arts of peace and civilization.”12 Moreover, the methods at Quaker schools often differed dramatically from those used by Pratt at Carlisle. In one of their own schools that operated during this same period, the Society of Friends used a pacifistic approach to education and developed quite a positive relationship with the tribe with which they worked. From 1880-1892, Quakers worked closely with the Cherokee of North Carolina in establishing schools with the intent to train teachers, farmers, and housekeepers and to give “instruction in the obligation of sound Christian morality, with a view to a fit preparation to become loyal American citizens, and to gain a support in life by honest industry and economy.”13 Such objectives could be aligned with Pratt’s assault on Indian culture, but not if they were enforced according to the four foundational guidelines that, according to Quaker historian Howard Haines Brinton, defined Quaker educational outreach: “(1) development of a sense of membership in the Quaker community; (2) pacifism, which in the sphere of education has meant non-violent discipline and an ‘appeal to 10 11 12 13

“Jerome Kennerly,” student record, “Carlisle Indian School Student Resource Center.” Accessed August 10, 2016. http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/ David Wallace Adams, “From Bullets to Boarding Schools,” in They Made Us Many Promises: The American Indian Experience, 1524 to Present, ed. Philip Weeks (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), 155. Extracts from Society of Friends (Hicksite). Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (1903), 60. Sharlotte Neely, “The Quaker Era of Cherokee Indian Education, 1880–1892,” Appalachian Journal, 2.4 (Summer 1975), 317.

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the inward sense of rightness’ (3) equal education of both sexes and all races and classes; and (4) simplicity, which in education has meant an emphasis on practical subjects.”14 These values emphasize full integration of students into the Quaker community on an equal footing with their teachers, and they specifically forbid corporal or other harsh punishment; moreover, they imply that students are expected to exercise at least some degree of self-determination (“an appeal to the inward sense of rightness”), a recognition of the authority and discernment of each pupil. Such values did not guide Carlisle’s mission. In fact, Pratt criticized Quaker approaches to assimilation, commenting in his autobiography, “The Indians construed Quaker pacifism as governmental weakness and also as license to do as they pleased.”15 In other words, Pratt objected to Indian self-determination and cultural integration. Previously, in 1892, he had voiced the same opinion about any missionary endeavor that didn’t seek to sever Indian children from their families: The missionary goes to the Indian. He learns the language. He associates with him—makes him feel that he is friendly and has great desire to help him. He even teaches the Indian English. But the fruits of his labor, by all the examples I have seen, have been to strengthen and encourage him to remain separate and apart from the rest of us.16 Pratt’s comment reveals a curious paradox here. He accuses missionaries who are friendly to Indian students of enabling them to remain separate from them—yet from the Quaker point of view such openness was intended to integrate them. Pratt’s approach to integrating Indian youth into the Anglo-­ American community was to use sheer force—full assault on their language, family, tribe, and culture. Having no other markers of identity, students would have no other choice but to become integrated with the Anglo-American community. This notion of integration dramatically inverts the one represented in the four Quaker guidelines to education. Pratt proudly and famously proclaimed that the goal at Carlisle was to “kill the Indian” in order to “save the man.” Such a statement aptly captures Pratt’s inverted understanding of Indian integration, one that excludes Indian self-determination and equality. 14 Ibid, 316–317. 15 Pratt, Battlefield and Classroom, 36, footnote 14. 16 Published for the first time in Elaine Goodale Eastman, Pratt: The Red Man’s Moses, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935), 112, from a paper read by Richard Pratt at an 1892 conference.

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On the other hand, the Society of Friends’ work with the Pawnee, which began in 1869, was notably different in its approach from that practiced with the North Carolina Cherokee and resembles the aggressive approaches that typified Carlisle specifically and the Federal era more broadly. As Neely asserts, There the Quakers had set out to destroy Pawnee culture by disrupting traditional patterns of division of labor by sex, by breaking up villages and scattering families onto individually allotted farm-lands, by encouraging removal, and by cutting off food rations. Within twenty years the Pawnee population was more than cut in half by what [Wendell H. O ­ swalt in This Land Was Theirs] terms genocide.”17 Such psychological and physical aggression clearly was at odds with the four foundations of Society of Friends education of Indians. To what do we attribute such disparities? Individual differences among educators, agents, and other assimilators? As problems within the Grant Peace Policy administration increased during the seventies, the trend among missionaries was toward increasingly aggressive policies, even among missionaries who in the early part of the century had used pacifistic methods. Indeed, by 1879, when Pratt started his school, the Grant Peace Policy, which was explicitly linked with Quaker tolerance, was seen as a failure, and many used it to broadly criticize federal Indian policies. In 1870, in a Senate debate over the Indian appropriations bill (HR 1169), Senator Thomas Tipton openly condemned the Peace Policy as not only bad for Indians but also the nation: “You say that Quaker policy is a success, and the only way to keep the peace is to feed and feed and feed, and let one portion of this country work and work and work and toil, in order that your agents may go and feed and feed and feed to save the lives of the rest of the population.”18 While critics complained that continuing the Policy would be too expensive and would force federal government and private organizations to “support” Indians indefinitely, assimilators lamented that it infantilized Indians, making them dependent, and infringed on their inherent right to be independent citizens. At the same time, as criticism of Indian subsidies mounted, the pressure on the federal government to rapidly assimilate Indians so that it could open up cheap Western land for settlement reached a fevered pitch. By 1933 Luther Standing Bear (Sioux) would decry the intensity of the pressure that “has been 17 18

Neely, “Quaker Era,” 319. C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, Crooked Paths to Allotment: The Fight over Federal Indian Policy after the Civil War (Chapel Hill: U North Carolina, 2012), 103.

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brought to bear upon the native people, since the cessation of armed conflict, in the attempt to force conformity of custom and habit.”19 Yet as early as October 19, 1867, in the Hicksite Friends’ Intelligencer, Samuel M. Janney penned an article on the difficulty of managing Indian affairs given the “pressures” created by white settlement, remarking that “to restrain the movements and prevent the aggressions of a population like that on our Western frontiers— so eager, so adventurous, so grasping—is probably beyond the powers of any government.”20 Even the Cherokee nation, which had implemented successful farms within the reservation system, and had made great strides in educating tribal members, finally could not resist the incredible force of this tide.21 It is likely no accident, then, that Carlisle, with its focus on alienating students from their homes and communities and pressuring them into adopting Anglo-American behavioral norms, strategies that contributed to the dismantling of the reservation system, came to be perceived as the most successful American Indian school of the century.22 Carlisle’s growing reputation, in turn, generated increasing federal and private support, which caused it to expand its enrollment. As a result, Carlisle’s perceived success significantly shaped the beliefs and methods of assimilators throughout the country.23 Indeed, the Friends of the Indians (Lake Mohonk Conference [lmc]), a reform organization established in 1883 by Hicksite Quaker Albert K. Smiley, enthusiastically embraced Carlisle’s aggressive methods and built its ­legislative 19 Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1933), 248. 20 Milner, Good Intentions, 15. 21 Tom Holm, “Indian Lobbyists: Cherokee Opposition to the Allotment of Tribal Lands,” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 2, May 1979, 126. 22 Regarding Carlisle’s academics, Jacqueline Fear-Segal reports there were no graduates until 1889, eight years after the school’s founding, and only six graduated in 1893. Further, she writes, “Carlisle supplied no more than a basic primary education” (White Man’s Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007], p. 175). So it is less clear whether its reputation as inordinately successful was well-earned. 23 William Robertson and his wife, Anna Eliza Worcester Robertson, daughter of famed champion of the Cherokee, Samuel Worcester, established a long-standing mission to the Creek nation in Indian Territory in the nineteenth century where they lived in close contact with the Creek community and learned their language, translating the Bible and hymnals into Creek. But, according to Elizabeth Thompson (The Princess, the Convert, and the Schoolgirl: American Indian Girls and Anglo Desire in American Literature, 1595–1934. 2008. U of Tulsa, PhD dissertation, 233), by the early 1880s, they had become convinced Pratt’s aggressive methods were more effective. Alice Robertson (daughter of William and Anna Eliza) writes in 1880, “When I was [at Carlisle] before, I did not think this would be a good place for our Creek children to come but I have been studying it very carefully since I came, and I think now it would be a most excellent thing.” Alice Robertson, letter to Ann Augusta Robertson Craig, November 12, 1880, Alice Robertson Collection, McFarlin Library Special Collections, University of Tulsa, ii.10.5.

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agenda around similar policies. The Friends of the Indians, comprised of Quaker and Protestant assimilators as well as reformers not affiliated with any religious group and even politicians and senators, campaigned heavily for legislation that would end the reservation system and force American Indians to take private ownership of a single parcel of land with all remaining land to be sold. Senator Henry Dawes, who sponsored the bill that in 1887 became law and did end the reservation system, was a member and frequent speaker at the lmc. According to Carlos Figueroa, Smiley “identified with and promoted humanitarian and egalitarian notions of social, economic, and paternalistic tendencies as other Anglo-Saxon white evolutionary racialist thinkers of his time.”24 In other words, if Smiley did sound condescending (for example at the third Lake Mohonk Conference, in 1885, with respect to the difficulties of solving the “Indian Problem,” “It is astonishing that nearly sixty millions of people cannot manage these few”25), he was revealing the extent to which he was a product of his environment. Evolutionary racialist theories of the era established a clear racial hierarchy, and they were so influential during the latter half of the nineteenth century as to be virtually unquestioned. Indeed, Dr. Thomas A. Bland was perhaps the sole non-native stand-out against such advocates of rapid assimilation, and he volubly criticized the Friend of the Indians and other reform organizations for betraying their trust. Yet even so, Bland believed all American Indians must be assimilated into U.S. society, eventually. He only protested that the assimilation process should proceed at a much slower rate and without external coercion.26 Quaker assimilators saw the reservation system as the greatest impediment to progress—perhaps in part because it linked American Indians to a distant past when they controlled vast tracts of lands and Euro-American colonists had to negotiate for access to it. Such American Indian sovereignty was at ­distinct odds with the paternalistic tone in which most Euro-Americans represented Indians (as revealed in the epigraph to this chapter). As Thomas ­Cowger explains, reformers believed it was their moral duty to spread civilization and progress from sea to sea: “These Christian reformers, convinced of their divine mission to spread American culture and to develop the West as a means of advancing Christianity, deeply believed that communal land-holding hindered the Indians’ progress toward ‘civilization.’”27 The tribal system stood for 24 25 26 27

Carlos Figueroa, Pragmatic Quakerism in U.S. Imperialism: The Lake Mohonk Conference, the Philippines and Puerto Rico in American Political Thought and Policy Development, 1898 – 1917, (The New School, PhD Dissertation, 2010). Lake Mohonk Conference Proceedings, Third Annual Meeting, October 7–9, 1885. Thomas W. Cowger, “Dr. Thomas A. Bland, Critic of Forced Assimilation,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal vol 16, issue 4, 1992, 78. Cowger, “Thomas A. Bland,” 78.

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ignorance and darkness, and so Quakers became partners with the one person they felt could most expediently dispel that darkness. 2

Redefining Indian Families: a Three-Pronged Approach

The key, Pratt believed, to his success in disconnecting Indians from their homes and culture was his summer Outing program, which placed Indian students with regional families where they would work through the summer or longer. Captain Pratt purportedly planned his Outing program to train Indian boys and girls for their own independent lives on farms. Indeed, Trennert points out that unlike some U.S. boarding schools for Indians, like the Phoenix Indian School in Phoenix, Arizona, Carlisle was at least “founded in idealism and great hope for the Indian’s future.”28 Pratt chose Quaker hosts for the program because he believed such hosts would be less likely to exploit student labor. In a 1912 issue of the Carlisle newspaper The Arrow, an article comments on the historical connection between Quakers and the Outing program: This system was put into operation in 1880, when two students were placed in homes of kindly disposed Quaker people. From such a beginning it has grown to the extent that last year 463 boys and 332 girls, a total of 795, were employed away from the school during a part of the year, mostly during the vacation months. By special arrangement students may remain at such homes during the winter months if patrons can arrange to give the pupils the chance to attend the public schools in the vicinity of their homes. Many students did remain out the entire year, even multiple years. (The degree to which they were able to receive an adequate education while in the country no doubt was determined by the English language skills they had when they were sent out.) Pratt also resisted their placement in urban settings, believing such work would lead more quickly and surely to servitude. He advocated the program, he said, not only because it immersed students in English language and Anglo-American culture but also because it trained them to work—a pursuit, he said, to which all Indians had a natural and intense aversion.29 28 29

Robert A. Trennert, “From Carlisle to Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of the Indian Outing System, 1878–1930.” Pacific Historical Review 52.3 (1983), 268. According to Pratt, “The Indian has never known anything about work, the simplest form of service sufficing for his immediate wants,” quoted in Information concerning the United States Indian Industrial School (Carlisle, Pa., United States Indian School, 1908), 68.

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The Society of Friends had similarly incorporated manual-labor training into the curriculum of their schools for years, though presumably not because it separated students from their families but because it was consistent with their own values: “The hallmark of Quaker education has long been its empirical and practical nature.”30 Certainly Quakers wished to shape their students’ lifestyle and culture, but for most of Quaker history, educators did not wish to do so at the expense of their values of self-determination, pacifism, and equality. In fact, with respect to the policies of the Hicksite agents of the northern superintendency under the Grant Peace Policy, Clyde A. Milner remarks, “True to the egalitarianism of the Inner Light, the Hicksite administration would view the Indians of Nebraska as spiritual equals and not press for conversion to Quakerism.”31 On the other hand, Ruth Spack writes that teachers and administrators at the Quaker-run White’s Institute did push students to convert: “Despite their professed view that ‘[e]ach pupil is the object of loving regard,’ the staff at White’s apparently pressured students until they succumbed to (the) Christian persuasion.”32 Self-determination apparently was a value that guided some but not all schools. The Outing program, by contrast, rejected Indian self-determination outright. While Carlisle encouraged students to attend church services in the Outing program, the school’s focus was never on conversion, which implied full and equal integration into the community, but rather on teaching Indians to work. Jacqueline Fear-Segal comments, “For the first time … conversion and the saving of souls was not the prime goal but instead the training of citizens.33 In fact, the Outing relied on a three-pronged approach to cultivating Indian students’ aversion to their own culture: 1) it employed the language and values of womanhood and domesticity to subjugate Indians, 2) it shamed Indian students into rejecting their homes and culture, and 3) it constructed Indian labor as redemptive of a people who were morally, culturally, and intellectually lost. Although Pratt never openly said so, it is clear that one of the Outing program’s most attractive features was its elimination of summer vacation thereby ensuring that students were unable to have any contact with their families or homes during their stay at Carlisle, a subtly aggressive tactic that should have been at odds with the Quaker values of pacifism and self-determination. Carlisle requested upon enrollment that parents commit to leaving students for a full five years, though few students stayed that long. In addition, of course, 30 Neely, “Quaker Era,” 316. 31 Milner, Good Intentions, 21. 32 Ruth Spack, “Dis/engagement: Zitkala-Ŝa’s Letters to Carlos Montezuma, 1901–1902,” melus 26.1, Varieties of the Ethnic Experience (Spring 2001), 172–204. 33 Jacqueline Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 26.

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living in the homes of white families meant that students were immersed for extended durations in white cultural contexts, which meant primarily the workings of domestic life—in everything that happened in and around a white home. Isolating students in white homes for long periods offered the further benefit of allowing Carlisle to make strategic use of the white values and the rhetoric of domesticity and true womanhood to subjugate Indian students. 3

Indian Subjugation and True Womanhood Values

Assimilators throughout the nineteenth century had used the values and rhetoric of white womanhood to subjugate Indians because they promoted docility and malleability.34 In the epigraph, the writer proclaims that “hereafter ‘Indian’ will mean to Mrs. Holden a quiet, dignified girl who knew how to fill her position.” The language here subtly posits that all Indians are implicitly female, in other words, easily subjugated and domesticated. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and others have written extensively on the gendering of ethnicities in America, a rhetorical strategy that reinforces Indian powerlessness and voicelessness.35 To that end, assimilators frequently focused on the schoolgirl, rather than the schoolboy, both in their rhetoric and their enrollment. Carlisle was not the first Indian school to use such a strategy. Isaac Baird, for example, a Presbyterian bfm (Board of Foreign Missions) missionary to the Odanah tribe, reveals in an 1883 letter to fellow Presbyterian missionary John Lowrie just how important he believed the focus on schoolgirls to be to the success of assimilation. He writes, “The girls will need the training more than the boys & they wield a greater influence in the future. If we get the girls, we get 34

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By white womanhood and true womanhood values, I mean those values “by which a woman [of the nineteenth century] judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society, [and which] could be divided into four cardinal virtues—piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity,” Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976), 21; see also Phillida Bunkle, “Sentimental Womanhood and Domestic Education, 1830–70,” History of Education Quarterly 14.1 (Spring 1974): 13–30; and Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth Century America (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1981), 67–88. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender and Ethnicity in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1985). For more on this, see Philippa Levine, Gender and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Peggy Pascoe, “Race, Gender, and Intercultural Relations: The Case of Interracial Marriage,” A Journal of Women Studies 12.1 (1991): 5–18. Carolyn Sorisio, Fleshing Out America: Race, Gender, and the Politics of the Body in American Literature, 1833–1879 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002).

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the race.”36 Baird’s statement reflects the paradoxical nature of assimilation, sounding simultaneously hopeful and predatory. Schoolgirls were seen to be the key to assimilation for a number of reasons. First, their daily lives on Indian reservations were thought to be more closely aligned with white domestic life than that of Indian males: “The girls are easily trained and delight in all branches of domestic industry, and in needle work including cutting and making.”37 As Linda Clemmons observes of the Dakota missionaries, three times as many girls had enrolled in their mission school as boys: Dakota women did not need to make substantial changes in their gender roles to become civilized, as they already cooked and cared for their children. Dakota men, however, needed to completely change their gender roles (for example, giving up hunting and going to war) before they would be considered civilized.38 In keeping with such rhetoric, enrollment of girls at Carlisle increased steadily from the beginning to the end of the century.39 Second, girls were important because of their capacity to influence other Indians. An article in one of the Carlisle newsletters, the Indian Helper, shows how Pratt believed Indian girls’ influence over Indian men to be imperative to his assimilation plans: Once it happened that a young man who was “sowing his wild oats,” became acquainted with one of those young girls to whom innocence is as vital as pure air. The magnetism of her goodness made him a changed man. He forsook his evil companions and when chaffed about the influence of Miss M---, he said: “When I am with her I want to be good, and I hate myself for being bad. I dare not call on her after visiting my old haunts. I had to choose between them, and she drew me upward more strongly than they were pulling me down.”40 36

37 38 39 40

Isaac Baird to John C. Lowrie, July 14, 1883, American Indian Correspondence: The Presbyterian Historical Society Collection of Missionaries’ Letters, 1833–1893 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), G:I:III, quoted in Carol Devens, “‘If We Get the Girls, We Get the Race’: Missionary Education of Native American Girls,” Journal of World History 3 (1992), 219–237. Neely, “Quaker Era,” 318. Linda Clemmons, “We Find It a Difficult Work: Educating Dakota Children in Missionary Homes, 1835–1862,” American Indian Quarterly 24.4 (2000), 575. Robert Trennert, “Educating Indian Girls at Non-Reservation Boarding Schools, 1878– 1920,” Western Historical Quarterly, 13.3 (Jul., 1982), 273, 277. Indian Helper 8.42 (July 7, 1893).

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Statements like these construct women as naturally more virtuous than men and essential to men’s improvement. On the other hand, Miss M is thrust into the role of colonizing one of her community members, and she uses shame to carry out her task—even as the girl’s white teachers had used shame to improve her. This process of colonizing through shame and disapproval not only perpetuated racial ideologies but also sometimes had the effect of ensuring that Indian schoolgirls would be alienated from their tribes, clans, and families while remaining unaccepted by whites. Missionaries and teachers also focused on native girls because they were concerned about their influence over children in their roles as future mothers. Indian tribal leaders like Ispahekchar, Principal Chief of the Muscogee Nation, using the language of white assimilators, expressed similar concerns: We are glad to see both boys and girls learning all these things. Some say there is no use in girls learning at school, or their work is only to take care of their homes. But as they are the ones who have the training up of the children to do if they are taught the things that their children need to learn they can give them good training, while if themselves ignorant they cannot.41 The statement reveals that assimilators had circulated among various tribes rhetoric rationalizing the conscripting of schoolgirls into practicing what Richard Brodhead has called “disciplinary intimacy” or, alternatively, what many scholars have termed internal colonialism.42 They were made to exploit intimate relationships within their families and tribes in the service of implanting white values in them. 4

Cultivating Cultural Aversion through Shame

While the use of true womanhood values to subjugate and domesticate American Indians, young and old, was not uncommon in the nineteenth century, Carlisle was perhaps the first school so aggressively to use cultural aversion 41 42

Undated writing by Ispahekchar, who served during the 1880s as Principal Chief of the Muskogee Nation, Alice Robertson collection, University of Tulsa Special Collections, 1:1:15. Richard Broadhead, “Sparing the Rod: Discipline and Fiction in Antebellum America” Representations 21 (Winter, 1988); Ann Laura Stoler, “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies” The Journal of American History 88 (2001): 829–865.

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and shaming in conjunction with the deployment of the values and rhetoric of true womanhood. Anglo-American cultural practices were deployed through the Carlisle newspapers and teachings not as preferences but as moral imperatives. In a post-graduation survey, Mary North, a former Carlisle student who was asked to describe her current home writes, “Lumber house frame / only two rooms / we are going to have a larger house built this winter coming.”43 Just as Pratt had hoped, the student expresses first pride in living in a house made of lumber, rather than a tent, but quickly reveals a sense of inadequacy in having such a small house and amends her entry to note her intentions to make it bigger. In other words, she had internalized white cultural preferences as moral imperatives and had retained them—even after leaving Carlisle and returning to her home, where she continued to spread Carlisle values through her community. Other examples of moral coercion or shaming appear in Carlisle newsletters. In a story entitled “A Hard Place to Live” printed in 1893 in the Carlisle newspaper Indian Helper, the student writer describes going home for a visit and running into a fellow Carlisle student who had returned to Indian cultural practices. She writes, I was surprised to see—in Indian clothes and painted face, the other day. Every time I went near to her to speak she would run away. She was ashamed of course. …. Her mother is a bad old Indian woman. That is the way [running away from home] the returned Carlisle girl has to do if she lives in camp with a mother who is opposed to education … My father and mother are respectable Indians and we have a pleasant home …44 The passage explicitly pressures Indian schoolgirls into rejecting mothers who cling to Indian ways. Yet the writer goes on to argue with anyone who would suggest that Carlisle teaches daughters to run away from parents. She continues, I’ve heard it said that, “Yes, Carlisle teaches daughters to run away from their mothers.” I know that is not true. Carlisle says help your mother if she needs it and you WILL BE helped, but if she is a bad woman and is determined to make you a bad girl, it is better to stay away from her isn’t it? 43 44

“Mary North,” student record, “Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.” Accessed August 30, 2016. http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/sites/all/files/docs-ephemera/ NARA_1327_b045_f2220.pdf Indian Helper, 9.10 (December 1, 1893).

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Despite its rhetorical complexities and contradictions, the passage’s final message is clear: Carlisle girls must reject home and family. The following month, in January of 1894, in a story titled “Poor Little Indian May: Off to School and Back Again,” the writer directly addresses the complaint that Carlisle separates children from their families: Hence, why this bug-a-boo talk against separating Indian parent and child when done in the interest of all concerned and when the parent is led to see the wisdom of such a course and philosophically submits. Indians are natural philosophers and are as capable of seeing and understanding fair reasoning as any other class of people.45 In a startlingly condescending and detached tone, the writer (a teacher or possibly a student) minimizes the destructiveness of separating children from parents even as she demands that parents “philosophically submit” to losing their children. Such overt destruction of the family is reminiscent of the slavery that divided families prior to the Civil War, eliciting Quaker outcries. Yet as land pressures mounted against American Indians after the Civil War, Quaker organizations increasingly supported the dismantling of the reservation system and the removal of children to off-reservation schools away from parents. An 1887 article in The Friends’ Intelligencer and Journal states, “Some tribes have steadfastly set themselves to maintain existing conditions and to prevent any steps toward the abolition of the tribal organization, or of the present reservation system. If our National Government is to protect the Indians it should govern them. No more agreements depending upon their consent should be made with them.”46 Both abolishing the tribal organization and dismissing Indian self-determination suggests a shift in Quaker views by 1887. Once parents had submitted “philosophically” to the loss of their children, they would be replaced by Country Families, the term Carlisle newsletters used to characterize the host families in the Outing program. The Outing program in this way was able to strategically combine the cultivation of aversion to and shame about Indian culture with the elevation of white culture in order to annihilate or at least undermine Indian families and replace them with white ones.

45 46

Indian Helper, 9.16 (January 19, 1894). Friends’ Intelligencer xliv and Friends Journal xv (1887), 267.

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Becoming True Women through Work

Girls became ideal targets for manual-labor boarding schools not only because they were perceived as easily domesticated and as wielding special influence over their communities, but also because, ironically, their value to white society was negligible, making their labor cheap. As K. Tsianina Lomawaima observes, “Domesticity training for Indian girls was a clear surface manifestation of the gender- and race-defined fault lines segmenting American society.”47 Even as Indians were constructed as female because it reinforced their powerlessness and voicelessness, Indian labor was deployed as feminine because it exploited schoolgirls’ invisibility, making it possible to take advantage of student labor with little accountability. Carlisle officials actually anticipated just such objections to Indian labor and addressed them in its publications. The editor of the “Outing Issue” of the Carlisle Arrow and Red Man describes the Outing program as one that is designed only for the benefit of Indian students, not as a tool for exploiting Indian labor: The outing does not, in any sense, train boys and girls as domestic help or servants. It is required when Indian students enter homes that they shall be taken on a footing of absolute equality and mutual respect. The girls do the work that a daughter would do in her own home.48 This quote advances the hope that white families could be created for Indian boys and girls, wherein they would be transformed into adults who could easily assimilate into white society, a hope that was based largely in fantasy, given the racialized rhetoric of the period. There is much in this passage that disrupts the image of an ideal inter-racial family. First, the passage clearly implies that Indian children are incapable of learning what they should in their own homes. They have not received proper parenting and will not be able to become suitable parents in turn without the intervention of Carlisle.49 That “the girls do the work that a daughter would do 47 48 49

K. Tsianina Lomawaima, “Domesticity in the Federal Indian Schools: The Power of Authority over Mind and Body,” American Ethnologist, 20.2 (May, 1993), 227. “The Outing Number,” The Carlisle Arrow and Red Man (June 7, 1918), 13. For example, Pratt expressed the fear that Indian women could pass on to their children “heathen rites and superstitions,” making such mothers “unfit” (Pratt, arcia, 1889, 188–89, quoted in Trennert, “Educating,” 277). Also, in a letter to Presbyterian missionary Alice Robertson, fellow missionary Anne Lange commented, “[Indian children] demand

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in her own home” is, then, a fiction. The passage makes clear that the kind of work an Indian girl would have done in her own home would have been quite different. So, too, is it a fiction that she was treated as a daughter, despite claims to the contrary. In 1918, an article in the “Outing Number” reports that some seventy-­ eight girls had circulated through one home.50 It is doubtful they received the attention and devotion a daughter would have. Further, the same passage notes, “For many years the farmers in these localities have depended upon this school for their summer labor.” Clearly, then, the Outing system was not exclusively devoted to the altruistic efforts of nearby farmers to train young Indians for positions that facilitated their assimilation into white society. Rather, cheap Indian labor had become an important aspect of their economy, and it had become an intergenerational feature of the local economy. As the same passage reports, “In some cases the country mothers of today are the daughters of the country mothers of yesterday.” Indian girls, plainly, had no chance of becoming country mothers themselves. Much more likely, their daughters would circulate through white families as household servants as long as Carlisle existed. As Fear-Segal observes of the Carlisle Outing program, “Despite rubbing shoulders with honest toiling folk, Indian youths were also becoming familiar with drudgery and being schooled into acceptance of a lowly place in white society.”51 That the Outing program was deployed in the same era that witnessed the greatest wave of U.S. immigration yet seen and that this wave, too, was driven by cheap female labor seems especially relevant here. In the minds of assimilators in this period, schoolgirls were becoming associated necessarily with domestic servitude rather than academic promise, and they were taking their place at the lowest rung of society where prospects for any other form of self-support were limited. In the Carlisle newspapers, though, Indian schoolgirl labor was not described in terms that revealed either schoolgirl invisibility or the cheapness of schoolgirl labor. Rather, it was described in lofty rhetoric that specifically connected it, ironically enough, with the white values of true womanhood. In the Carlisle Arrow and Redman article mentioned above, the anonymous writer observes, “It is expected that [girls in the Outing] do get new inspiration and

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industrial education and drill in those things which they cannot find in the Indian home” (July 23, 1923, AR Collection, ii.2.10). Finally, as Donald A. Grinde and others have pointed out, boarding schools were founded on the assumption that the home environment perpetuated savagery and therefore students must be removed from both home and family before they could internalize white values (Grinde, “Taking the Indian out of the Indian: U.S. Policies of Ethnocide Through Education,” Wicazo Sa Review, 19.2 (2004), 25–32. “The Outing Number,” The Carlisle Arrow and Red Man (June 7, 1918), 10. Fear-Segal, 174.

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a new vision of life and the true ideals of womanhood [from their Country mothers].”52 Paradoxically, that they were laborers ensured that they would be permanent members of the lower class, forever excluded from white womanhood. Labor rigidly structured racial and class hierarchies of the nineteenth century, a fact that would have been obvious to Carlisle’s supporters, Quaker and non-Quaker alike, and would have marked the schoolgirl as a permanent member of the lower class.53 Working-class children were cheap sources of labor and were encouraged to work, to support their families, sooner rather than later. Prolonged exposure to adult work environments, often demanding, even dangerous, was not considered tragic for the working-class child since she was not perceived to possess the kind of purity and innocence that could be corrupted by such environments,54 a fact that deeply problematized ascribing feminine virtue to the laboring schoolgirl. Convincing Indian girls that through their labor they could become true women, a step that was essential to the completion of their training, was one of the most insidious, if unacknowledged, aspects of Carlisle’s Outing program. For example, the article “From a Little Girl in the Country: How She is Making a Woman of Herself,” published in the Indian Helper, reveals that Indian girls become women by performing an exhaustive list of household duties. The schoolgirl writes, I am done washing the supper dishes so I thought I would write a letter to you and send ten cents for the [Indian] Helper another year … I go to school in the afternoons …. I milk two cows in the evening and sometimes three. We have twelve cows. I make two beds, sweep, dust, strain the milk, help to get the meals, make the fires in the mornings, help to wash and iron, gather the eggs, carry wood in and get the kindling, wash dishes, churn, scrub, and other little things. In the evenings, I study my lessons. But my eyes trouble me so much they get red and pain. Well, today we picked twelve turkeys for to sell. I must close my letter, So good by.55 The mechanism by which this laboring schoolgirl will be improved is hard work, not literacy training. Indeed, there is little time or energy left for academic work. 52 53 54 55

“The Outing Number,” The Carlisle Arrow and Red Man (June 7, 1918), 13. Joseph E. Illick, American Childhoods (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 76–102. See, for example, Mary Niall Mitchell, “‘Rosebloom and Pure White,’ Or So It Seemed,” American Quarterly 54.3 (2002), 381–382. Indian Helper 4.19 (December 21, 1888).

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Moreover, as I indicate in the epigraph to the chapter, the hard work of an Indian schoolgirl was placed in direct opposition to the archaic image of the Indian princess: “’Princess in Disguise’ is the name which was most aptly applied to our Nettie Standing Bear by her patron last summer.” Again, the writer’s use of princess imagery serves only to heighten the disparity between earlier romantic representations of Indian women and the lower-class servitude Indian schoolgirls of the late nineteenth century were actually destined to fill. The writer goes on to observe, “’Indian’ will mean to Mrs. Holden a quiet, dignified girl who knew how to fill her position.” Filling her position, notably, meant accepting her role as a servant. Significantly, all traces of romance, and especially of nobility, have been erased in this Indian girl. She plainly was not a figure who could gesture to alliances between sovereign nations, nor was she one who could signify transcendence of social or racial attitudes. Rather, she had become a prosaic figure symbolizing servitude. Ironically, Pratt complained that as long as the reservation system was intact, Indian girls would be guaranteed to face a lifetime of drudgery. Yet the Outing program of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seemed to ensure this outcome, not just while at Carlisle but throughout the student’s life. This would have been clear to school officials because they monitored students closely (in the Outing program and even after they had graduated), a panoptic mechanism for pressuring them into complying with Carlisle values throughout their lives.56 In response to one post-graduate survey, a female Carlisle graduate writes, “I really don’t know what to tell you I don’t want to tell you what I am doing because it is the same old way, cook, clean up, wash, bake, and doing a few chores.”57 This schoolgirl likely could hope for little more than serving positions in white households after her schooling at Carlisle. Nonetheless, Carlisle promised that domestic work could cure her of her baseness and, in turn, of the inferiority of her people. An anonymous schoolgirl credits Carlisle with rescuing her from her former state of indolence and ignorance: “I may have been narrow minded and ignorant to have considered service a drudgery and distasteful work, but these people taught me to love necessary work. We were fortunate to have been a part of the Carlisle family and owe much to the Outing. It was there we learned the fundamental self home-making.”58 The phrase “self home-making” may have been used by the 56 57 58

See Andrew John Woolford, Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States, specifically chapter 6, “Knowledge and Violence as Assimilative Techniques.” “The Outing Number,” The Carlisle Arrow and Red Man (June 7, 1918), 13. “The Outing Number,” The Carlisle Arrow and Red Man (June 7, 1918), 14.

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teachers at Carlisle to signify independent competence in domestic skills, yet it also subtly suggests that such Anglo-American skills have been internalized and made to become the basis of self-hood, to the exclusion of tribal traditions and ties, yet another example of the internal colonialism Carlisle practiced. Another schoolgirl’s letter demonstrates this same colonizing rhetoric. Writing to the anonymous, shadowy panoptic figure the students called the Man on the Band Stand—a stand-in for Pratt—whose voice was heard throughout The Indian Helper, the writer testifies to the way domestic work has rid her of her former “savagery”: “I wish the Man-on-the-band-stand could see the bread that I make. I know that he would not think that it was made by one of his little wild Indian girls.”59 Such statements advance the insidious fantasy that the wholesomeness of bread baking can solve the “Indian problem,” but it obscures the fundamental obstacle of the rigid racial and class hierarchy that had come to structure white society. In fact, Carlisle was so deeply invested in this fantasy that one of its teachers and school newspaper editors, Marianne Burgess, writing under the penname Embe, devoted an entire short novel to the theme. Published in 1891, Stiya: A Carlisle Indian Girl at Home advances the dream that schoolgirls trained in domestic manual labor at Carlisle can return home and by baking bread, cleaning, and making their beds save their people from the degradation of their present lives. In the story, after her education at Carlisle, where she underwent its labor-intensive curriculum, Stiya returns home and for the first time sees her family as savages. The home she grew up in now appears to her as squalid. When she sees her father and mother waiting for her at the train station, she is filled with horror. “’My father? My mother?’ cried I desperately within. ‘No, never!’ I thought, and I actually turned my back on them.”60 Stiya’s Carlisle teacher, who has traveled with her, however, intercedes and bids her return to her family and home. She commands Stiya, “Be a woman! … Make the best of these people, and go to your mother.”61 At Carlisle, of course, being a woman means engaging in a long list of menial tasks, so this is the mandate the girl hears. After graduating from Carlisle, being a woman also meant for schoolgirls overcoming their learned aversion to their families, homes, and cultures long enough so that they might pass on Carlisle’s lessons to other Indians. Nonetheless, the story makes clear that becoming a woman does not mean entering society as an equal and enjoying the same opportunities and 59 Indian Helper 9.38 (June 15, 1894). 60 Embe, Stiya, A Carlisle Indian Girl at Home; Founded on the Author’s Actual Observations, (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1891), 3. 61 Ibid, 4.

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privileges as its white members, but rather remaining wedged in an isolated region between Indian and white cultures.62 Clearly, white women reserved the right to define for Indian schoolgirls what womanhood should signify for them, who could become a woman, and who could not. As Stiya settles into her old home, she continues to struggle with feelings of revulsion, describing the home as infested by scorpions, snakes, flies, and other pests. Meat is dried inside, hung on a line “as people in civilized countries hang their clothes on lines to dry.” To her abhorrence, her family seems not to notice the swarm of flies the meat attracts. The air in the home is thick with smoke from the fire, and everywhere she finds “filth and dirt.” Stiya muses to herself, “We must learn to feel disgust for these things. If we have not disgust for them we will never try to make them better.”63 The story uses the mechanism of shame and aversion to their culture and their families to assimilate schoolgirls. At last Stiya resolves that the responsibility to make her parents and her home better rests only with her, and she sets about cleaning and tidying. She teaches her mother the proper way to wash clothes, clean the house, and cook. She reports, “Instead of the Mexican tortilla that my mother and all the pueblo women know so well how to make, I made Carlisle biscuit, and baked them in a pan covered over with hot ashes.”64 She then sets a table with tablecloth and silverware and serves her family their first proper dinner. “This is nice,” Stiya’s father comments. “We will never eat from the floor again, will we?” Stiya’s homemaking has quickly begun to render its effects. Stiya then asks, “Father, how long do you think we will have to live in this little room? I wish we had a larger house.” Her father replies, “We shall have a larger house. We might have had one long ago if I had paid more attention to work and not wasted so much time dancing.”65 The story’s message is clear: Indians are responsible for the squalid conditions in which they find themselves, participating in traditional tribal practices are to blame for these conditions, and hard work—not ­education—is the solution to their problems. In the final chapter, Stiya reports, “We had many other seemingly unsurmountable difficulties to encounter in our progress up the hill of Right.”66 Nevertheless, they are finally able to buy a larger house, furnish it tastefully, dress 62

63 64 65 66

During the same period as the publication of Stiya, Zitkala Sa wrote about the problems of Indian school graduates who could not feel comfortable in white society in Indian Impressions of an Indian Childhood, The School Days of an Indian Girl, and An Indian Teacher among Indians. Embe, 20. Ibid, 96. Ibid, 97. Ibid, 115.

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themselves appropriately, and eat abundantly and politely. Stiya concludes, “I have never regretted having braved the first hard steps that led me out of the accursed home slavery and made me a free woman.”67 Paradoxically, then, the story promises that menial labor will deliver Indians from the slavery of their conditions. The story is disturbing not only because it promises schoolgirls liberty in return for perpetual menial labor, but also because it turns them into cultural intermediaries who civilize their people by deploying the same shame and contempt that have been showered upon them. As Janice Gould observes, the schoolgirls’ main tasks were to “internalize the hatred and antipathy the white world felt toward them and to return home with the goal of leading their parents out of the ‘degradation’ of their ‘heathen ways.’”68 In other words, white female domestic conventions served mostly to remind Indian girls of the ignominy and squalor from which they emerged, while they pretended to offer them self-sufficiency and redemption. Lomawaima similarly argues that the primary aim of Indian education in this era was to create a laboring class and that that goal was underwritten by the federal government: “The roots of domestic education for all American women makes clear the underlying federal agenda, which was to train Indian girls in subservience and submission to authority.”69 6

Manual Labor and Declining Literacy

That manual labor had the corresponding effect of reducing the amount of time spent on the advancement of literacy goes without saying. A little more than half the day on the Carlisle campus was spent in manual-labor training leaving a little less than half for education. By several accounts, the curriculum at Carlisle was rigorous relative to that in other Indian schools. Yet there was a clear prioritizing of labor over learning. [Indian children] need something more than the training incident to the public school system. They demand industrial education and drill in those things which they cannot find in the Indian home. In other 67 68 69

Ibid. Janice Gould, “Telling Stories to the Seventh Generation: Resisting the Assimilationist Narrative of Stiya” in Reading Native American Women: Critical/Creative Representations, Iris Hernandez-Avila, ed., (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2005), 18. Lomawaima, 81.

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words they need the routine and example which can only be found in the boarding schools of the country, in the Indian and Negro institutions of the type of Carlisle, Hampton and Harrison.70 This statement explicitly describes a two-tier education system: a public school system for white children and an industrial one for Indians, which in addition to providing labor training physically removes children from their homes. Pratt defended the prioritizing of manual labor, explaining that at Carlisle the theory was “Not higher but better education”71—better, Pratt implies, because more appropriate to Indian capacities and prospects. Further, in a 1912 issue of the Carlisle Arrow newspaper, Dr. Schaeffer, State superintendent of public instruction of Pennsylvania, quips that at a recent groundbreaking for a new school, several high ranking officials (including a Supreme Court justice and the president of Harvard) were sadly unable to plow—because they had never had the privilege of receiving a manual-labor training, he implies. As a result, he continues, they had not received a “complete education.” Calling manual labor a complete education was a strategy for rationalizing it; nonetheless, the story implicitly reinforces the fact that Indians followed a different educational path than did whites.72 While the writer presents Carlisle students’ education as superior because it balances literacy with manual-labor training, the story also makes clear that the country is quickly succumbing to a two-tier, racialized education plan in which Indians receive manual-labor training and whites receive higher education. Even Hampton Institute director Samuel Armstrong believed young children shouldn’t be sent to the boarding schools because their time and the school’s would be wasted. They should study locally and improve their language skills before going to boarding school. While Pratt recognized the difficulty of putting young children without English language skills in the Carlisle classrooms, his solution was different: enroll them and then immediately send them to the Outing program for long stretches. From my examination of Outing records, the longest Outing durations tended to occur right after the students’ arrival.73 It seemed not uncommon for young students to stay out the entire year. They were expected to attend the local school, but given many of the students’ rudimentary English language skills, probably the local schools were ill-equipped 70 71 72 73

Anne Lange, letter to Presbyterian missionary Alice Robertson, July 23, 1923, Alice Robertson Collection, University of Tulsa Special Collections, ii.2.10. Information concerning the U.S. Indian School, 46. Carlisle Arrow 9.10 (November 8, 1912), 1. Student records, “Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center,” http://carlisleindian. dickinson.edu.

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to meet their needs, a situation that may have served to reinforce the seeming legitimacy of a two-tier education system. While nominally white educators alluded to the equal capacity of Indian children, their writing often revealed a degree of skepticism about it. Fear-Segal points out that Superintendent of Indian Schools Estelle Reel believed that Indian students’ capacities mandated a different curriculum than that which was appropriate for whites. She states that, with Reel’s 1901 publication Course of Study for Indian Schools, “The negative assessment of Indian capability that had always shadowed the campaign for Indian assimilation had now been openly acknowledged and embraced.”74 That such an assessment was penned by the Superintendent of Indians Schools is all the more revealing. Moreover, the prioritizing of manual-labor training over education violated the wishes of some Indian parents, whose queries about Carlisle’s methods and requests for different ones, were dismissed as ignorant. In a 1920 report from the Office of Indian Affairs an official criticizes Indian students’ parents: “The [native] parents do not appreciate the modern idea of education. They have never experienced the joy of personal accomplishment. Work is distasteful to them. Hence they take exception to all practical instruction.”75 Notably, the official, here, defines “modern education” for Indians as primarily comprised of “work.” An August 6, 1912, letter to Pratt from Mrs. Susan Duscham (Menominee), the mother of currently enrolled Carlisle student Louise Striker, explicitly challenges both the assertion that “work is distasteful” to her and the implication that she doesn’t understand what kind of education her child really needs: I am glad to hear [Louise] likes the folks she is staying with [in her Outing placement] and gets along fine but I dont want her to stay there all the while she is out there. I want her in school that is the reason I send her there I have all kinds of work for her wright at home if she is out there to work she might as well come back home. I can learn her to do any kind of work wright at home myself the only thing I cant learn her is schooling. She hasent got any to good health for hard work.76 (sic) This passage is remarkable for several reasons. First, Mrs. Duscham rejects not only assimilators’ complaint that Indians have a natural aversion to work but 74 In White Man’s Club, Fear-Segal explains that Reel’s 1901 Course of Study for Indian Schools precisely mirrored Hampton’s racist philosophy and curriculum, 123. 75 Reports of the Department of the Interior, Volume 2, for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1920, Indian Affairs Territories. 76 “Louise Striker,” student record, “Carlisle Indian School Student Resource Center.” Accessed August 1, 2016. http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/

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also the many assertions of the Carlisle newspaper that Indian girls can learn nothing but bad habits in the homes of their mothers. In fact, the writer emphatically twice repeats her claim to being a hard worker who is fully capable of training her daughter herself, using the word “work” three times in this brief passage. In addition, while she does “take exception to [the] practical instruction” Louisa receives, it has nothing to do with wanting her to avoid work but rather with recognizing that she isn’t receiving the academic education she had been promised. Undoubtedly, the school had pledged to Susan Duscham that her daughter would be offered a rigorous course of mathematics, reading, writing, and a host of other academic subjects. It is only such an offer that could have tempted her to allow a child in not “any to[o] good” health to travel a thousand miles from home and live in such an institution. Her permission was given for no other purpose than to obtain an academic education, the mother pointedly observes. Written in a beautiful hand, the letter nonetheless is marked by grammatical and punctuation errors. It may have been written by Mrs. Duscham or, more likely, a young person who had received some education—but who clearly had not mastered written communication. It is in such a context—the possibility of her own illiteracy or the partial literacy of the letter writer—that we should read Mrs. Duscham’s concern about the neglect of Louisa’s literacy training. Her letter reflects a savvy awareness of the skills her daughter must acquire at Carlisle in order to prosper in the coming decades—and manual labor skills are not among them. The clear difference between Carlisle’s position and Susan Duscham’s is that the mother wishes for more than mere survival for her daughter, to accept a position of servitude as a permanent member of the working class. She wants her to enjoy a life that is better than her own, to live as an equal in a society where well-developed literacy skills are requisite. Susan Duscham’s letter poignantly reveals that Indian parents of this era were quite aware of what skills they wanted for their children, of what skills Carlisle had promised to teach their children, and of Carlisle’s failure to make good on its promises. Acknowledgement I am very grateful to Dickinson College for digitizing a significant portion of the Carlisle school records, facilitating scholarship that would not otherwise be possible. I also am grateful to Marsha Dutton, Professor Emerita of English, Ohio University, whose careful reading of and thoughtful commentary on this manuscript was immensely helpful. I particularly appreciate her insights about how the devaluing of female immigrant labor in the late nineteenth century may have affected perceptions of schoolgirl labor.

Chapter 14

Quaker Roles in Making and Implementing Federal Indian Policy: From Grant’s Peace Policy through the Early Dawes Act Era (1869–1900) Carol Nackenoff with Allison Hrabar 1 Introduction The West provided an early arena for growth of federal power in the nineteenth century,1 for the modernization and bureaucratic development of the American state, and for novel, direct federal intervention into individual lives.2 This was made possible in no small measure because of the power the national government exercised over its territories and over American Indians. Once American Indians had been moved and more or less confined to reservations, the federal government was able to exercise more comprehensive jurisdiction over those who were considered its wards. In the later decades of the nineteenth century, Federal family policy became a centerpiece of the effort to civilize Indians and to bring them under the ­influence of law. Indians had to be transformed from children into adults. The project of creating such adults required constituting and regulating proper families, and delineating and inculcating recognizable, acceptable ­middle-class gender relations, whatever the prior customs and traditions of American Indian families. Organized Christian reformers, Quakers included, had been working to influence the federal government’s Indian policies. While these efforts became especially highly mobilized around 1880, corruption and perceived corruption of politically appointed Indian Agents spurred the previous ­generation of reformers to action. Reform of federal Indian policy resulted 1 In addition to Allison Hrabar ‘16, who conducted key archival work, thanks to research assistants Molly Petchenik ’16, Leo Elliot ’19 and former Swarthmore students Stuart Russell ’14 and John McMinn ’13. 2 Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 58–59; Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth Century America. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 357–59; Stephen J. Rockwell, ­Indian Affairs and the Administrative State in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 303.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_015

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from the collaboration between various groups of Christian reformers and government. One of the authors is completing a larger project that more fully traces the roles played by a variety of post-Civil War activists in American Indian f­ amily interventions, including enforcing formalized monogamous marriages and stamping out polygamy, connecting these interventions to processes of administrative rule-making and state building.3 The current chapter uses two important, related, and influential instances of Quaker intervention in this period to show how activities of the Society of Friends fit into some larger patterns. These instances (a) highlight patterns in the relationship between private and public actors in state building in the late nineteenth and early ­twentieth ­centuries, (b) illustrate the important role women played in entering and ­restructuring the home—which was part of the ‘private’ sphere for those who were fortunate enough to perform bourgeois expectations about the family, (c) point to the role of policy experiments, often designed and carried out by organized reformers, in pointing the state in new directions, and (d) demonstrate how deeply conflicts over gender, sex, and family are rooted in the history of the modern liberal state.4 The two cases we focus on here had significant legacies. The first involves efforts by the Society of Friends, articulated clearly in 1869, to be allowed to appoint all the personnel for one reservation (including provision of education). Under Grant’s Peace Policy, this initiative blossomed into a much greater assignment with comparable responsibilities for other Christian denominations. The second, approximately twenty years later, involved the experiment the Friends undertook to establish a field matron program, which then, with their prodding, became part of government policy. 2

Public-Private Partnerships under Grant’s Peace Policy

President Grant’s Peace Policy owed a great deal to the persistent work of religious leaders and organizations involved in Indian reform, with the Society of Friends taking part in the lead. By the 1860s, a number of Christian reformers became deeply concerned about the consequences of white land hunger and fraud as it affected American Indians; some saw first-hand what

3 Carol Nackenoff, “Home on the Range: Constructing American Indian Families and Gendering the State, 1870s-1920s” (unpublished manuscript). 4 Paraphrasing Robert O. Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy since the 1960s (New York: Hill &Wang, 2012); Priscilla Yamin, American Marriage: A Political Institution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

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was ­happening. Missionaries had already been working in the field, believing that bringing Christian values and principles into direct contact with American ­Indians would aid their adaptation to white civilization. And in 1865, ­missionary ­societies began working under contract with the government to maintain Indian schools that taught mechanical and agricultural arts.5 By 1859, Henry Whipple, serving as Episcopal Bishop in Faribault, Minnesota, had begun urging both the President and the Indian Service to end political appointments to the Indian service; he argued instead for the a­ ppointment of a commission to administer Indian affairs, made up of men of high character who lacked political motive. In 1862, Whipple was instrumental in p ­ resenting a memorial signed by eighteen Episcopal bishops to this effect to the President. Philadelphia Episcopal merchant William Welsh, later to found the ­Indian Rights Association (1882), joined Whipple in lobbying for a board of inspectors, selected from candidates nominated by religious organizations, that would make annual visits to Agencies in the west. Following the war, a joint committee of both houses of Congress was formed to investigate conditions on the reservations, and a bill containing the Welsh-Whipple proposals was introduced in Congress in 1866. The Society of Friends joined the Episcopal Church in supporting this proposal.6 According to historian Henry Fritz, the effort to secure passage of such a measure produced “an alliance between the Quaker and Episcopal Churches which was essential in the inauguration of the ‘Peace Policy.’”7 In 1867, Congress authorized the appointment of a commission, made up of both military and civilian members, to make peace with the Plains tribes. This commission met in St. Louis and envisioned concentrating Indians, eventual land allotment, compulsory education using the English language, and government provision of things needful for the development of self-sustaining habits.8 The Peace Policy sought to end Indian wars and advance the assimilation of American Indians.9 It embraced the 1867 recommendations of the Peace Commission that “all agents and superintendents be relieved of office and only the competent and faithful reappointed.”10 As Indians were more systematically confined to reservations and army supervision of reservations was w ­ ithdrawn, accomplishing state work among American Indians came to depend on 5 Henry E. Fritz, “The Making of Grant’s ‘Peace Policy,’” Chronicles of Oklahoma 37 (Winter 1959–1960): 411–32, especially 411–12, 415–16. Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis: Christian Reformers and the Indian, 1865–1900 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975), especially Chapters 1 and 2. 6 Fritz, “Making of Grant’s ‘Peace Policy,’” especially 413–15 7 Fritz, “Making of Grant’s ‘Peace Policy,’” 415. 8 Fritz, “Making of Grant’s ‘Peace Policy,’” 419–21. 9 The Board of Indian Commissioners was established prior to passage of other portions of the Peace Policy by Congress in 1873. 10 Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 312, quoting Prucha, Great Father, 492.

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­ roffered collaborations between public authorities, religious organizations, p and other friends of the Indian. The Quakers would offer government their assistance in developing more Christian methods of governing the Indians; the administration accepted, incorporating reformers into its plans for governance.11 Both Orthodox (Gurneyite) and Hicksite Friends joined in the projects of civilization envisioned by the peace policy.12 They generally supported the goal of allotment of lands so that Indians would live on individual farms, and other measures designed to hasten their civilization and assimilation.13 The Quakers had participated in civilizing projects before.14 According to Ray Batchelor in this volume, Pennsylvania Quakers took on a civilizing mission after the Revolutionary War, in part to regain a recognizable masculine role that their wartime pacifism had stripped from them.15 Quakers had a long history of mission work among American Indians that included education in traditional subjects as well as in farming methods.16 In this volume, Stephanie Gamble explores how Philadelphia and Baltimore Quakers in particular played an important role in federal-Native cultural diplomacy in the early years of the republic, hosting visiting Native American envoys, and boarding and providing education for some American Indian children.17 Sometimes, these early civilizing projects entailed collaboration with the federal government. The Baltimore Friends, Lori Dagger explains in Chapter Eleven, established several agricultural missions in the early years of the nineteenth century, drawing upon their own and federal funds to share knowledge of agricultural and mechanical arts with American Indians in the Ohio Country as the federal government sought to establish authority in the region.18 11

Reformers’ ideas were not adopted wholesale; the Board of Indian Commissioners was not given the authority reformers had hoped. 12 Hamm, The Quakers in America. Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 169. 13 Clyde A. Milner ii, With Good Intentions: Quaker Work among the Pawnees, Otos, and Omahas in the 1870s (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 192–93. 14 Lori Daggar, “‘A Damnd Rebelious Race’: The U.S. Civilization Plan and Native Authority,” Ch. Eleven in Quakers and American Indians. 15 Ray Batchelor, “‘Cast Under Our Care’: Elite Quaker Masculinity and Political Rhetoric about American Indians in the Age of Revolutions,” Ch. Five in Quakers and American Indians. 16 For one recent exploration, see Kari Elizabeth Rose Thompson, “Inconsistent Friends: Philadelphia Quakers and the Development of Native American Missions in the Long Eighteenth Century,” Iowa Research Online, University of Iowa Dissertation, Spring 2013. Accessed at https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4774&context=etd 17 Stephanie Gamble, “‘Strong Expressions of Regard’: Native Diplomats and Quakers in Early National Philadelphia,” Chapter Five in Quakers and American Indians. 18 Daggar, “‘supra note 14’: The U.S. Civilization Plan and Native Authority,” Ch. Eleven in Quakers and American Indians.

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So Quaker engagement in implementing projects with goals aligned with federal government aims was not novel at the time of the peace policy; nor was the blurring of lines between public and private activity novel in the nineteenth century state. Representatives of the seven yearly meetings of The Society of Friends met in Baltimore in 1868 and prepared a memorial asking: “Let the effort be made in good faith to promote their [the Indians’] education, their industry, their morality. Invite the assistance of the philanthropic and Christian effort which has been so valuable an aid in the elevation of the freedmen and render it possible for justice and good example to restore that ­confidence which has been lost by injustice and cruelty.”19 In January, 1869, they met with president-elect Grant; an additional delegation of Friends met with Grant the next day. Soon, an aide of the President sent letters to the ­Hicksite and Orthodox (Gurneyite) Friends requesting that they supply names of suitable candidates to become Indian Agents. Grant did not plan to fill a large number of agencies with Quakers, but the Friends had not actually expected to be handed responsibility for selecting agents. According to one scholar of the period, “[w]hat the Friends had won from Grant was a concession to conduct an experiment.”20 A joint committee consisting of Quakers and Episcopalians subsequently went to Washington to press their ideas for reform on members of Congress. Benjamin Hallowell, from the Hicksite Society, proposed that government assign an entire superintendency to the Hicksites, who would appoint all employees, naming individuals whose sole concern was for Indian welfare; appointments would be subject to presidential approval and Senate confirmation.21 On April 10th, 1869, Congress appropriated $2,000,000 (two-thirds of what had been requested) for the Peace Policy, including this experiment. This legislation authorized the president to organize a board of ten commissioners. Significant credit was due the Quakers for establishment the Board of Indian Commissioners [henceforth bic]. It was comprised of representatives nominated by the various Protestant denominations who served as volunteers, though their expenses (including for visiting reservations) were to be reimbursed by the government.22 While Board members thought they were being offered a more important role in setting Indian policy, they were limited to a more advisory role. They were given some oversight over purchase and distribution of supplies for the western reservations. The Board, at annual meetings, 19 20 21 22

Memorial quoted in Fritz, “Making of Grant’s ‘Peace Policy,’” 426. Fritz, “Making of Grant’s ‘Peace Policy,’” 426 including quote. Fritz, “Making of Grant’s ‘Peace Policy,’” 427. The Joint committee was established in Philadelphia on March 20, 1869; Hallowell’s proposal was made on April 5, 1869. Fritz, “Making of Grant’s ‘Peace Policy,’” 427.

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met with “representatives of religious societies engaged in missionary work among the Indians.”23 The Peace Policy stipulated that in order to supply “competent, upright, faithful, moral, and religious” government field personnel,24 religious societies would nominate appropriate candidates for these positions.25 Missionary boards nominated agents and others to work in the field.”26 Different religious organizations were placed in charge of different reservations “in hopes that the religious societies would choose better individuals for the tasks and thereby alleviate problems of corruption and mismanagement and improve administration.27 Their mission included educating children on the reservations. Friends were among the religious organizations doing public work through provision of such “services” in the field. Assigned the charge of various agencies with a view toward pacification and civilization, the Quakers partnered with the federal government in providing for and staffing Indian education at this time. The Hicksite Friends were ­assigned six agencies in Nebraska: The Santee Sioux, Winnebago, Omaha, Pawnee, Otoe, and Great Nemaha (the last included the Iowa and the Sac and Fox of Missouri tribes). The Orthodox Friends had been assigned the Cheyenne and Arapahoe, Kiowa, Comanche and Wichita, Osage, and the Sac and Fox agencies in Indian Territory.28 Boarding schools were established in the Quapaw Agency for the Ottawa (1870) and for the Quapaw and Seneca (1872); both contract schools were under the care of the Friends.29 While “the Seneca and Shawnee tribes were very reluctant in accepting the offer of education made by both government and church … the influence of President Grant’s peace policy and the practical kindness of the Friends soon filled the school with pupils.”30 In 1881, the Orthodox Friends told the bic that “[f]ive missionaries with their wives have been 23

The phrase appears at the beginning of annual reports of the Board of Indian Commissioners to the Secretary of the Interior, e.g., the 1889 report (Volume 20). 24 Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 312, quoting Prucha, Great Father, 482. 25 While Grant originally filled most of the agency posts with military officers, Congress forbid military personnel from holding civil office in 1870 (see Fritz, “Making of Grant’s ‘Peace Policy,’” 427). 26 Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 312. 27 Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 312. 28 Special Report, 1888: Indian Education (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1888). 29 Andrew Atchison, Supt., Seneca etc. Boarding School, n.d. 1891 (submitted with the U.S. Indian Agent’s report of August 25, 1891), Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (Atchinson, arcia for the year 1891, Part i, 237. 30 Andrew Atchison, Supt., Seneca etc. Boarding School, n.d. 1891 (submitted with the U.S. Indian Agent’s report of August 25, 1891); arcia for the year 1891, Part i, 237.

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engaged among the Indians in the Quapaw, Sac and Fox, Osage and Cheyenne and Arapahoe Agencies.”31 Of the nine denominational schools in existence among the Cherokee, Indian Territory, in 1903, one in Hillside was run by the Orthodox Friends under the charge of Miss Eva Watson.32 It was not uncommon to find husband-wife teams of educators in the field on public salary; indeed, the first superintendent and matron of the Wyandotte, Shawnee, and Seneca boarding school (1872) established by the Friends were a husband-wife team.33 Across various denominations teaching under the contract system, women were occasionally found among school superintendents and principals, but more frequently they worked as teachers and assistant teachers, clerks, penmanship and drawing teachers, music teachers, matrons, nurses, seamstresses and sewing instructors, cooks, kitchen assistants, and laundresses at American Indian boarding schools, industrial and manual labor schools, and day schools. Women taught in girls’ schools and boys’ schools;34 they taught women and girls cooking, crafts, and manual labor.35 Other women taught skills as unpaid helpers working alongside their husbands. Schooling serves as a reminder of how cooperative arrangements between state and non-state actors were important in solving nineteenth century problems of governance, extending public authority.36 While some Quakers and other denominations were in the field in the 1860s and early 1870s with mission schools they funded, following the Peace Policy, the marriage of public and private efforts in establishing, staffing, and funding schools became pronounced. In a case of government borrowing capacity, the federal government gave financial assistance to religious groups to set up Indian schools on the reservations; these were known as “contract schools.” Although the practice of assigning reservations to different religious denominations had come to an end by the early 1880s, in the late 1880s and into the mid-1890s, some sectarian schools were run by religious groups with government financial assistance, government (by the late 1880s and 1890s) ran some schools on its own,

31

Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners for the Year 1881, Report from the Associated Executive ­Committee of Friends concerning the Orthodox Friends, 54. 32 Sklatook Academy in Indian Territory. Report of the Office of the Cherokee School Supervisor, Tahlequah, Indian Territory, July 15, 1903; arcia for the year 1903, Part ii, 270 and also 256–57. 33 Andrew Atchison, arcia for the year 1891, Part i, 237–38. 34 E.A.Howard, U.S. Indian Agent, Report from the Sioux and Lower Brule Agency, Dakota Territory, September, 1874; arcia for the year 1874, 256. 35 R.S. Vickery, Assistant Surgeon, United States Army, Report on the Navajo Agency, Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 19, 1875; arcia for the year 1875, 330–31. 36 Balogh, A Government Out of Sight, 354–55.

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and “government continued to rely upon missionary effort for the schools it itself failed to provide” following the Dawes Act (1887).37 Government appropriations remained inadequate for the project of educating Native American youth. The contract school system continued to be actively supported while Indian Commissioners Price, Atkins, and Oberly were in office (1881–1889), and religious groups during this period responded by “putting more money into Indian school buildings than the government itself.”38 While agencies were assigned to different denominations, in practice, a single agency could be served by missionaries from different denominations, so that different schools were run by different religious groups—some in collaboration with government.39 Both a Protestant Episcopal and American Missionary Association had missions on the Santee Agency in Nebraska; the Episcopal Mission ran what the Agent reported to be a highly successful school until it was destroyed by fire in 1884—the Agent was supported by the Society of Friends.40 In 1891 at the Quapaw Agency in Indian Territory, the Friends had five societies, the Methodist Episcopal Church South one, the Methodist Episcopal Church one, and the Baptists one. The Friends had recently erected a church on the Ottawa Reserve and the Baptists were building another at this agency.41 Practices that the modern federal courts would consider excessive government entanglement with religion seemed to be rather commonplace on the late nineteenth century reservation.42 Efforts to compel school attendance, even at religious schools, often engaged the coercive power of the state, and might extend beyond rounding up children to withholding rations or supplies from the parents.43 Federal policy that instruction on and off the reservation 37 Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 289–90. 38 Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 290. 39 See, for, example, Standing Rock Agency, North Dakota (1890) and Crow Creek and Lower Brule Consolidated Agency, South Dakota (1890); arcia for the year 1890, 40, 47. See also A.P. Dixon, U.S. Indian Agent, Report of Crow Creek and Lower Brule Agency, South Dakota, August 28, 1891; arcia for the year 1891, Part I, 400. 40 Sometimes American Indians set fire to these schools in an attempt to resist compulsory education. See David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 229; Francis Leupp, Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1905–1909, The Indian and His Problem (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), 239–40. 41 T.J. Moore, U.S. Indian Agent, Report from Quapaw Agency, Indian Territory, August 25, 1891; arcia for the year 1891, Part I, 235. 42 History of North American Indians: History of Indian-White Relations (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978). 43 Women in the field played an important role in cajoling or helping force parents to send their children to boarding schools, to break the influence of family and tribe and promote

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take place in English applied to non-governmental schools as well. In late 1886, Commissioner J.D.C. Atkins decreed that “[i]n all schools conducted by missionary organizations it is required that all instructions shall be given in the English language.”44 In July 1887 the Commissioner added that “No mission school will be allowed upon the reservation which does not comply with the regulation.” Atkins sent this directive to representatives of societies having contracts with the bia for conducting Indian schools, while conceding that “preaching of the Gospel to Indians in the vernacular is, of course, not prohibited.” He noted that “the five civilized tribes have taken the same view of the matter and that in their own schools—managed by the respective tribes and supported by tribal funds—English alone is taught.”45 This last reference to the Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes demonstrates that in certain cases, agents relied upon Indians themselves for the implementation of federal policies. Denominations voiced strong resistance to the policy as it pertained to the mission schools, and they did not all comply with the order to confine secular teaching to the English language.46 Roman Catholics were highly active in establishing schools under the government-supported contract system and received the largest share of the funds designated for contract schools; this led to growing opposition to the contract schools.47 Thomas Jefferson Morgan, a strong believer in public education for American Indian children and opponent of Catholic-run contract schools was confirmed as Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1889 despite efforts by influential Catholics to block him. Morgan was supported by the bic and the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian [henceforth, lmc] reformers; Protestant reformers evinced a growing preference for public education of Indians at government expense. They recognized that the ­contract school had done considerable work in getting American Indian ­children into schools more rapid assimilation. See Margaret D. Jacobs, “‘The Great White Mother’: Maternalism and American Indian Child Removal in the American West, 1880–1940,” in One Step over the Line: Toward a History of Women in the North American Wests, ed. Elizabeth Jameson and Sheila McManus (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2008), 191–213. 44 J.D.C. Atkins “The English Language in Indian Schools,” from Report of September 21, 1887, House Executive Document No. 1, part 5, vol. ii, 50th Congress, 1st session, serial 2542, in Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” 1880–1900 ed. Francis Paul Prucha (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 18–23. The Commissioner’s order was issued December 14, 1886. 45 J.D.C. Atkins in Prucha, Americanizing the American Indians, 202, 203. 46 Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 47. 47 Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 291. By one account, nearly two-thirds of government funding for Indian education was going to Catholic schools by 1890; see http:// blackandindianmission.org/about-us/bcim/. See also History of North American Indians.

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and that missionaries had often provided the only education to which these children had access. Nevertheless, the same late nineteenth century anti-Catholicism that eventually led thirty-seven states to pass Blaine Amendments fueled the argument that government appropriation for church schools created a First Amendment violation of the separation of church and state.48 In 1889, the Commissioner announced his intention to terminate federal contracts with the religious schools, and Congress subsequently began to gradually withdraw financial support from the contract schools. In 1900, funds were cut off altogether.49 Commissioner Morgan’s announcement hardly brought an end to religious organizations’ influence in American Indian education. If denominational oversight of different tribes and education of their children waned, denominational influence persisted in important ways. In 1884, the Wyandotte, Shawnee and Seneca boarding school at the Quapaw Agency passed out of the control of the Society of Friends, to be totally operated by the federal government. Yet in 1891, eight of the nine superintendents that served the school since its founding were Quakers.50 At the Fort Sill Boarding School in Oklahoma, the Women’s Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church South was carrying out the school work in 1882, and the Women’s Board supported two women doing camp work. These women went into American Indian homes to teach “domestic civilized house life,” and to engage in prayer meetings and Bible reading.51 Philadelphia’s Katharine Drexel took her inherited fortune and used it to create American Indian schools; she gave the money to build and furnish Holy Family Industrial School at Two Medicine on the Blackfeet Agency, Montana, completed in 1891.52 The Women’s National Indian Association was conducting Lot’s Day School on the Spokane Reservation in 1898, with Miss Helen W. Clark in charge; according to the agent, her “work among these Indians is of the highest order, and too much can not be said in praise of that estimable lady for her devotion to the Indian cause.”53 In 1903, nine denominational schools 48 Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 308–09; Reverend James M. King, secretary of the National League for the Protection of American Institutions, Proceedings of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian (henceforth, lmc), 1890, 51–58. 49 Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 318. 50 Andrew Atchison, arcia for the year 1891, Part I, 238. 51 J.J. Methvin, Missionary of the M.E. Church South to the Western Tribes, Report of the Supt. of Fort Sill Boarding School, Oklahoma, July 15, 1892; arcia for the year 1892, 390. 52 George Steel, U.S. Indian Agent, Blackfeet Agency, Montana, August 26, 1891; arcia for the year 1891, 267. 53 Albert M. Anderson, U.S. Indian Agent, Colville Agency, Miles, Washington, August 20, 1898; arcia for the year 1898, 300.

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existed among the Cherokee in Indian Territory.54 Missionary work continued, and female missionaries continued to work within American Indian homes. Both the Orthodox Friends and the Hicksites had expected to exercise some independence in their administration of Indian matters at the agencies under their charge. However, when Carl Schurz took over in the Department of the Interior in 1877 and chose Ezra Hayt as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, government oversight increased and relations between Quakers and the government began to sour.55 The administration intended to exert control over the Indian Service and Grant’s church-appointed agents, and partly out of a desire for greater efficiency, even turned to a network of informants at various agencies. The new administration felt Quakers and all other agents served under the government, and from the Quakers’ perspective, it now seemed that strict adherence to regulations and loyalty to the new Commissioner were demanded. To use more current imagery, the Quakers in effect resented government entanglement with religion. Between 1877 and 1882, all the Quaker agents but one were forced to resign.56 The Orthodox Friends withdrew from the Indian Service in early 1879, alerting President Hayes and the bic. However, they ­continued to run Indian schools after they withdrew from the government agencies assigned to them, also establishing and maintaining churches among the Indians.57 The Hicksite Quakers also withdrew from administrative responsibilities entrusted them by the Peace Plan relatively early, scaling back or giving back to the government charge of schools and agencies assigned them under the Peace Plan.58 Agents resigned their positions and Yearly Meetings refused to submit any new nominations.59 The last Hicksite agency, the Santee, was given back in 1885, with the claim that the Indians were “in such a state of civilization, education, and self-support as qualified them for the duties and r­ esponsibilities

54

Report of the Office of the Cherokee School Supervisor, Tahlequah, Indian Territory, July 15, 1903; arcia for the year 1903, Part ii, 270 and also 256–57 where it is made clear this Orthodox Friends school was begun in 1886. 55 Milner, With Good Intentions, 187–90. 56 Milner, With Good Intentions, 187–90. 57 Hicksites began phasing out after about a decade. Hamm, The Quakers in America, 169; The Hicksite Yearly Meetings told the Board of Indian Commissioners in January of 1881 of their decision to withdraw from all but the Great Nemaha and Santee Sioux agencies, and their decision not to nominate additional agents. By 1882, Agent Mahlon B. Kent was gone from the Great Nemaha agency, leaving only one Hicksite agent (Lightner at Santee). See Milner, With Good Intentions, 191. 58 Hamm, The Quakers in America, 169; Milner, With Good Intentions, 191. 59 Milner, With Good Intentions, 187.

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of American citizenship.”60 However, two successive Friends agents, Isaiah Lightner, followed by Charles Hill, remained in control at Santee until 1890. By the late 1880s, the Hicksites noted, other religious organizations were sending more personnel into the field and working more among the American Indians than were the Quakers.61 Although the Quakers were no longer participating in administering reservations after they withdrew in the early 1880s, a number of their efforts at Indian improvement continued. As Elizabeth Thompson makes clear in this volume, individual Quakers helped support the Carlisle (Pa) Indian boarding school in various ways—with donations, as teachers, and by taking part in summer education programs for Carlisle Indian pupils who lodged and worked with them on their local farms.62 And importantly, the Hicksites still took the lead in designing, launching, and lobbying for other programs in which they would, at least initially, take part, as we will see below. And in doing so, they used the Santee agency, still in friendly hands, as their field of operations. Grant’s Peace Policy failed to eliminate complaints about the ­corruption of Indian Agents and did not necessarily improve management on the reservations;63 however, it generated new stakeholders in federal policies. Inviting nominees from Christian denominations into the field to replace a previous and unsatisfactory governance system, the federal government embarked on public-private partnerships, creating new roles and positions that were neither wholly public nor wholly private. It is also reasonable to conclude that in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the federal government “borrowed capacity” by turning to religious organizations to civilize, educate, and Christianize the Indians.64 60 61 62

63 64

Special Report, 1888: Indian Education, 682–83, quote 683. Proceedings of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting for 1888, reported by Levi K. Brown and quoted in Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1888 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1889), 21. Elizabeth Thompson, “Saving Indians by Teaching Schoolgirls to Work: Quakers, the Carlisle Institute, and American Indian Assimilation,” Chapter Thirteen in Quakers and American Indians. Thompson points to the summer outing program as part of a project of cultural annihilation and a means of “coloniz[ing] Indian student interiority.” She finds Quakers making financial donations to Carlisle, serving as teachers, and as host families for the outing program that attempted to turn Indian girls into lifelong domestic workers. See also Milner, With Good Intentions, 195. See Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 312 See Elisabeth Clemens, “Lineages of the Rube Goldberg State: Building and Blurring Public Programs, 1900–1940.” In Rethinking Political Institutions: The Art of the State, eds. Ian

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283

After the Dawes Act: Quakers, the Home, and the Field Matron Program

The catalysts for the reform movement ushering in the Dawes Act era (1887) were the Ponca removal controversy, the eastern American Indian speaking tour of “Bright Eyes” and Standing Bear, and the publication of A Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson (1881), a work extremely critical of U.S. government policy. The speaking tour captured the attention of young archeologist and ethnologist Alice Fletcher, who became a pioneer advocate of land allotment, and of Helen Hunt Jackson. These events helped galvanize the lmc of Friends of the Indian, which began meetings annually in 1883. Just a few years after Custer’s death at Little Big Horn, elite reformers reached the conclusion that the ­American ­Indians needed a new, very different set of government policies. These reformers were confident that the “problem” of the Indian would yield, within a generation, to expertise borne of experience in the field, extension of the rule of law, and proper administrative methods. In 1882, Interior Secretary Carl Schurz and the Hayes Administration began using civil service selection—a more “scientific” method—for selecting U.S. Indian agents.65 Reformers in the field pushed back against further centralization, insisting there be local control over helpers such as clerks, farmers, and doctors.66 Women activists were involved in vital ways in the definition of the “Indian Problem”; they helped generate a reform paradigm in which women’s skills, experiences, and professional identities became part of the solution. Activities that women claimed by tradition—sanitation, health, infant mortality, child care, education, housekeeping and living conditions, safe food and drinking ­water—were increasingly becoming objects of governmental action. Since American Indians were seen as wards and children, it was not uncommon for women to speak of the “mother-work” of Indian reform.67 These reformers increasingly spoke about success in terms of clear methods, including thrifty, Shapiro, Stephen Skowronek, and Daniel Galvin. New York: New York University Press, 2006. pp. 380–443. See also the introduction to Statebuilding from the Margins: From Reconstruction to the New Deal, ed. Carol Nackenoff and Julie Novkov (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 65 For field matrons, civil service appointment did not begin until 1896. 66 Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 313. 67 See Lori Jacobson, “Shall We Have a Periodical?’: The Indian’s Friend, “in The Women’s ­National Indian Association: A History, ed. Valerie Sherer Mathers (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015), 46–61 at 48, quoting Amelia Quinton, “Address,” The ­Indian’s Friend, January, 1778, 3.

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e­ conomical housekeeping. By the first few years of the twentieth century, the term “domestic science” began to be used, by which was meant “home ­making—the doing of the duties of the home in a hygienic, economical, practical way.”68 As other efforts to get American Indians to part with tradition, habits, and culture yielded slow and arguably poor returns (including schooling and early land distribution efforts), the family—and women in particular—were targeted. In the late 1880s, reformers came to embrace the idea that, to hasten civilization, “Native women had to be brought in from the margins of tribal life to the center of the civilization process.”69 These women had to be relieved of drudgery and oppression, and instructed in proper household management. Native women would become, reformers reasoned, important agents of civilization. The General Allotment Act of 1887 (henceforth, Dawes Act) was forged in large part and pressed for by reformers attending the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian, which was organized and hosted by Albert K. Smiley, reformer and longtime, influential Orthodox Quaker member of the bic. This annual conference functioned as a highly active and competent policy advisory board during a time of change. The lmc can be likened to a “Bohemian Grove,” bringing together members of the bic, reformers from various groups, “experts” who had been to the field, educators, newly professionalizing social scientists, legal scholars, journalists, philanthropists, and politicians. Senator Henry Dawes, whose name would be forever linked to the General Allotment Act, was an active participant in the early years. This annual meeting constituted a significant public-private collaboration in itself and was important in shaping Indian policy reforms such as allotment policy and the General Allotment Act of 1887.70 The Dawes Act was an ambitious scheme for breaking up tribal government, distributing a portion of the land previously held collectively to male heads of household (while removing the rest from tribal control and making it available for sale), turning American Indians into citizens, and undertaking large-scale 68

69 70

Miss Katherine L. Keck, domestic science teacher, Haskell Institute, Kansas, gave a presentation entitled “What Shall Domestic Science Do for the Indian Girl?” at the Proceedings of the Pacific Coast Institute (August 21–26, 1905), briefly noted in Report of the Supt. of Indian Schools for the year 1906; arcia for the year 1906, 421. Lisa E. Emmerich, “Promoting Homemaking on the Reservations: wnia Field Matrons,” in The Women’s National Indian Association: A History, ed. Mathes., 87; 88 quote is from Emmerich. See Larry E. Burgess, “We’ll Discuss It at Mohonk,” Quaker History 60 (Spring 1971): 14–28; Carol Nackenoff, “Constitutionalizing Terms of Inclusion: Friends of the Indian and Citizenship for Native Americans 1880s-1920s,” in The Supreme Court and American Political Development, ed. Ronald Kahn and Ken I. Kersch (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 363–413.

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efforts of assimilation. This Act framed U.S. government policy toward American Indians until passage of the Indian Reorganization (Wheeler-Howard) Act in 1934. The land allotment initiative presumed that Indians who accepted their allotments in severalty and who gave up tribal relationships would become citizens. Dawes had expected that citizenship followed immediately from these events, but reformers came to accept an alternative reading: that citizenship would follow the end of a twenty-five year period triggered by individual allotment, a period during which allottees could be protected against loss of their lands to unscrupulous whites.71 Before the Dawes Act came to an end, approximately two-thirds of all tribal lands that had been held in 1887 were lost by American Indians.72 The Dawes Act reformers framed policies with the conviction that American Indians could quickly assimilate and take their place as citizens. It was only necessary to parcel out individual land allotments (often at a distance from their communities), teach individuals to earn their living by agricultural pursuits, wean them from government rations, Christianize and educate them, and dismantle tribal institutions and “the dwarfing influence of communism.”73 American Indians had to part with notions of collective self-government and instead become individually subjected to the laws of the United States government if they were to become mature citizens. As Reverend H.L. Wayland told the lmc in 1889: “It seems to me that we should forget the word ‘Indian.’ Let us spell Indian M-A-N: then we shall get over a good deal of the way in ‘solving the Indian problem.’”74 Part of this process of transitioning from children to “men” required that American Indians become quick studies in the customs, gender roles, and practices of contemporary white middle-class Americans.75 They were ­expected to 71 72

See Nackenoff, “Constitutionalizing Terms of Inclusion”, supra note 70. The estimate is about 90 million acres of “surplus” land and land originally allotted to Indians that ended up in white hands by 1934. See https://www.iltf.org/land-issues/ land-loss. 73 Leupp, The Indian and His Problem, 191–92. See also John F. Berens, “Old Campaigners, New Realities: Indian Policy Reform in the Progressive Era, 1900–1912,” Mid-America 59 (January, 1977), 61. 74 Reverend H.L. Wayland, Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the lmc (1889), 97, quoted in Alexandra Harmon, “When Is an Indian Not an Indian? The ‘Friends of the Indian’ and the Problems of Indian Identity,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 18 (Summer, 1990), 95. 75 In Chapter Eleven of this volume, Lori Daggar suggests that, dating to George Washington’s presidency, the program to civilize Native peoples “emphasized Euro-American gender norms, especially regarding labor.” Examining Pennsylvania Quakers’ interactions with American Indians in the last half of the eighteenth century, Ray Batchelor, Chapter Five above, contends that the rise of martial ideals of masculinity were powerful, and,

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live as monogamous families in individual houses built on their allotments, but a house did not make a home. In 1884, Special Agent Alice Fletcher told those gathered at the lmc that it was essential to “make civilized homes to be the centres of civilization among the tribes.”76 Making homes was conceded to be woman’s domain. And Victorian women could enter spaces that men could not, bridging a public-private boundary that was better respected for those peoples not defined as problems. Since the definition of the problem dealt women in, increasingly, women went into the field to Christianize, educate, and civilize American Indians. Building and maintaining proper homes, including teaching home economics, sanitation and nutrition; encouraging the adoption of Victorian middle-class home practices (eating off tables, using plates and silverware); and encouraging traditional gendered divisions of labor (with men as providers) were among the tasks female reformers set out to deliver. To civilize American Indians, the entire family had to be remolded in the image of the nineteenth century white, bourgeois, nuclear family, and reaching the women was seen as a key to doing so. Shortly after the Dawes Act became the law of the land in 1887, the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends [Hicksite] declared that the home was a major key to civilization, and reaching American Indian women was pivotal to the project of civilization. They had sent a delegation of Friends to visit the Santee and Ponca Agency (Nebraska), and the delegation report made mention of the need for an instructor among these American Indian women who could teach them how to keep house. The delegation found the houses of these people sadly deficient in the essential elements that made a home. Women, they reported, generally had no conception of the refinements of the home, nor of how to create simple adornments that help make a home attractive. The Baltimore Meeting set out to address these problems by employing a matron who would go among American Indian women in their homes, teaching them the art of housekeeping. They were confident good results would follow.77

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from this era, “the development of American conceptions of manhood were intimately bound to the project of colonizing and eliminating Indian groups.” In this context, Quakers embraced assimilation in order to avoid bloodshed. Alice Fletcher quoted in the Annual Proceedings of the lmc for 1884, 26–28. Levi K. Brown, Secretary of the Convention of the Seven Yearly Meetings of Friends and ­Joseph J. Janney, Chairman of Committee on Indian Affairs, Baltimore Yearly Meeting, ­Report to the Board of Indian Commissioners read by Joseph Janney, Twentieth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners for 1888 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1889), pp. 120–21.

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This same Baltimore Yearly Meeting made clear the connection they saw between working with American Indian women to create a home and the effect on the men. They reported to the bic that “[w]e have worked upon the theory that when you shall have made an Indian understand and feel the importance and the necessity of making his own living, and acknowledge the duty of providing for his family, he will have made a long stride towards independence and self-support… . Get him once enthused with the idea of becoming the head of an independent domestic establishment and let him once see the dignity of such a position, and the desire will come to bring it about.”78 By April 1888, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (J.D.C. Atkins) endorsed the Society of Friends’ idea of employing matrons at agencies, requesting that Secretary of Interior Vilas support appointment five matrons for the fiscal year. When submitting the proposal to the Senate shortly thereafter, Secretary Vilas voiced strong support for the Society’s suggestion “that matrons be appointed to teach the Indian women in their homes, encouraging and instructing them in their domestic duties, showing them how to keep their houses neat and clean … and to rescue them as far as possible from the life of mental and physical drudgery to which they have been hitherto held by the customs of their people.”79 The Baltimore Society of Friends continued pressing government adoption of this program, with apparent support from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. In early 1890, Commissioner Morgan wrote to the Secretary of the ­Interior that “for 2 years past my predecessors in office have asked that special provision be made for the training of Indian women in civilized customs and p ­ ursuits in their homes”; the Society of Friends “have long been interested in the subject, and for a tribe in which they are specially interested, have employed an ‘agency matron’ at their own expense.”80 Reporting to the bic in 1889, the clerk of the Baltimore Society of Friends wrote: “We continued our efforts at the last session of Congress to obtain provision for the appointment of matrons to teach the women of the tribes the art of housekeeping … We e­ xpect to renew our

78 79

80

Levi K. Brown, Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners for 1889, 21. Executive Document 50, U.S. Senate, 50th Congress, 1st Session, Letter from William F. ­Vilas, Secretary of the Interior, May 3, 1888, transmitting the letter of Commissioner A ­ tkins dated April 18, 1888 and referencing the letter from L.K. Brown from ­Pennsylvania, 2. Congressional Series of United States Public Documents, Vol. 2513 (1888). T.J. Morgan, Commissioner, to the Secretary of the Interior, April 19, 1890; Twenty-second Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners for 1890 (published 1891), 43.

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e­ fforts during the coming session, and shall not rest until we either accomplish what we want or discover that further labor will be useless… . We propose to ask for an appropriation to pay fifteen matrons to be assigned to the different tribes as they may need them.”81 The Baltimore Society of Friends started a six-month experiment at the Santee Agency; a Quaker-nominated Agent had been in charge there until at least 1884. Marie L.H. Steer was brought in to work among the women as a field matron. They reached out to enlist support from five other yearly meetings, asking that they help equip, and maintain the matron during this trial period.82 At the end of the six-month trial period and after the clerk communicated to the Commissioner and the bic, the government began to support the field matron at the Santee Agency in October 1890. Commissioner Morgan requested that Congress be asked to appropriate $7,200 to pay ten field ­matrons after that.83 The federal field matron program was begun in 1890 to hasten and promote the assimilation of American Indian women; the Bureau of Indian Affairs had been led into this program by the Society of Friends. These same religious and missionary activists were able to secure appointment by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs of their own choices to be field matrons. “The Indian reform movement included a ready-made supply of possible candidates for this position [of field matron].” Looking for appointees, “the bia asked the Religious Society of Friends, the Home Missionary Society of the Methodist-Episcopal Church (North), the Women’s Baptist Home Missionary Society, the Indian Rights Association, and the wnia [Women’s National Indian Association] to nominate women from their groups for field matron positions.”84 All of these organizations had representation in the field and were active in American Indian policy reform. The influence of these groups on field matron appointments began to slowly change with the implementation of appointment through civil service examination in 1896. The Commissioners of Indian Affairs shared their visions for what they expected from the field matron program:

81 82 83 84

Joseph J. Janney, Clerk, Society of Friends, Friends’ Yearly Meeting, Twenty-first Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners for the year 1889, 32 (published 1890). The Philadelphia Yearly meeting declined to participate; Ohio and Indiana declined as well, and Genesee did not respond (Milner, With Good Intentions, 194. The Twenty-first Annual Report did not make the Philadelphia disposition clear.) Joseph J. Janney, Clerk, Society of Friends, Friends’ Yearly Meeting, Twenty-Second Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners for the year 1890, 43–44 (published 1891). Emmerich, “Promoting Homemaking on the Reservations,” 89.

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Selection of field matrons must be made with the greatest care, for they must be women of judgment, character, industry, sound health, free from family and other cares, so as to be able to devote their entire time and strength to the work and ready to subject themselves to the privations which must be borne, if any tangible results are to be secured.85 Various Commissioners in those early years further glossed the duties of the field matron, which included caring for the sick, washing, ironing, sewing, making soap and butter, religious training, helping with sanitary food preparation, animal husbandry, and household construction projects. Field matrons should give Native men “kindly admonition as to the ‘chores’ and heavier kinds of work about the house which in civilized communities is generally done by the man.”86 These field matrons were to combine the “art” of homemaking with the “science” of housekeeping.87 They would focus on “cleanliness and orderliness, and all the gifts and graces which go to make a home.” “Without a previous ­education to help her out,” a woman’s instincts were not necessarily sufficient, so American Indian women needed guidance. Since unsanitary conditions and dirt were common, according to Emily S. Cook of the Indian Office, “[H]ome is where the soap is.”88 Field matrons went into the field with a curriculum for domestic education. “During the first decade of the program (1890–1900) … most field matrons were single, middle-class Euro-American women associated with missionary or Indian reform groups.”89 Much as farmers were sent to teach American Indian males how to farm, field matrons were “sent out to labor among the mothers and homes of the reservation”; a proponent in the field wrote “that these field matrons are a valuable auxiliary to the work of civilization can not be doubted.”90 In 1892, the newly appointed field matron at the Santee Agency 85 86 87 88 89 90

Thomas J. Morgan, Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, August 27, 1892; arcia for the year 1892, 100. Emmerich, “Promoting Homemaking on the Reservations,” 88, including quotes from Commissioner Oberly and his successor, Thomas J. Morgan (the quote included here). Emmerich, “Promoting Homemaking on the Reservations,” 89. These quotations are from Miss Emily S. Cook, “Field Matrons,” lmc, 1892, in TwentyFourth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, 1892 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1893), 61. Lisa E. Emmerich, “Marguerite LaFlesche Diddock, Office of Indian Affairs Field Matron,” 13 (Summer 1993), 162–71, quote at 164. See also Emmerich, “Promoting Homemaking on the Reservations, 85. Merial A. Dorchester, Report of Special Agent, Indian School Service, October, 1892; arcia for the year 1892, 600.

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(Nebraska) reported that she was showing members of Indian families how to cook, bake, and crochet; she wished that more of the homes were neat and clean.91 Her counterpart at the Ponca Subagency in South Dakota wrote that same year about providing tables so that Indians would not need to eat off the floor, expressing pleasure to have received a donation of dishes from a woman in New York so that she could show the Indians their use.92 These women usually lacked familiarity with tribal cultures and languages; they were expected to champion appropriate moral standards. An eastern-­ educated Omaha, Marguerite LaFlesche Diddock, was appointed a field matron in 1896. She soon became entangled in upholding and explaining new marriage laws that faced tribal resistance.93 The Navajo apparently had about 600 acres under irrigation in 1895, thanks to the work of the field matron.94 The program that had begun with ten field matrons grew to employ thirty in 1900, fifty in 1910, and peaked at ninety field matrons in 1918 before beginning to drop.95 Field matrons were replaced with nurses in the late 1930s since medical expertise was seriously lacking on the reservations.96 Over time and with the civil service examination, the field matrons were less likely to be drawn from the ranks of philanthropic organizations engaged with the “Indian problem,”97 and the link between religious reformers and government that had fueled the appointment of field matrons was largely severed. Nevertheless, the plan that the Quakers had incubated had become part of the mechanism of governing family members and government service provision on the reservations. 4 Conclusion Governing in America was frequently a matter of combining public and private power in the nineteenth century. This may be especially true in the case of 91 92 93 94

95 96 97

Etta Penney, Field Matron, Santee Agency, Nebraska, August 15, 1892; arcia for the year 1892, 316. M.L. Douglas, Field Matron, Ponca Subagency, South Dakota (part of the Santee Agency, Nebraska), Report of August 15, 1892; arcia for the year 1892, 316. Emmerich, “Marguerite LaFlesche Diddock,” 165, 167. Twenty-fifth Annual Conference of the Board of Indian Commissioners; arcia for the year 1895, 1082; Emmerich, “’Right in the Midst of My Own People,’: Native American Women and the Field Matron Program,” American Indian Quarterly 15 (Spring 1991), ­201–16, Appendix 1, 212.” Appendix I, 212. Emmerich, “Right in the Midst,” Appendix 1, 212. Lisa E. Emmerich, “Field Matrons,” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians, ed. David J. Wishart (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 68. Victoria K. Haskins, Matrons and Maids: Regulating Indian Domestic Service in Tucson 1914–1934 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012), 40.

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American Indians, where the Constitution restricted the authority of i­ ndividual states.98 In examining the role of Quakers in policy initiatives involving American Indians in the decades following the Civil War, this blending of public and private power is clear. This was part of the process of late nineteenth century state building, and government drew upon the capacity of non-governmental organizations to accomplish some of the tasks of governance. The creation of the bic, the division of agencies among various Christian denominations, and the collaborative funding and staffing of day schools and boarding schools— all advanced greatly by Quaker activism—were examples of such collaboration. If the Quakers did not envision or embrace some of the consequences of this collaboration, their idea for fully staffing a single agency as a kind of policy experiment helped give rise to the policies that were enacted. In the process, some of the roles created were neither purely public nor public private, blurring the boundaries between state and non-state actors. The creation and implementation of the field matron program likewise serves as an example of the blending of public and private power that frequently took place as part of state building in the latter part of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. In a pattern that would manifest itself in various Progressive Era reformer initiatives, non-governmental actors essentially designed an experiment in the field that, if successful, would be pressed upon the state as a new, government funded, public policy innovation.99 The Society of Friends conceived, financed, and embarked on a small policy experiment that they believed would be successful, with a plan to persuade the federal government to fund and take over a larger program. With prior experience working with American Indians, the Society of Friends incubated a policy experiment and worked toward goals that were consistent with the direction of reform thinking. The project of civilization, which took female reformers into the home and involved efforts to school and mold families in the image of sentimental Victorian ones, was at the same time a project to extend control over American Indian customs, behaviors, and cultures in the name of legibility.100 Those who went into the field as part of the collaboration between religious organizations 98

United States Constitution, Article I Section 8 in particular, plus interpretations by the Supreme Court. 99 For some examples, see Nackenoff, “Toward a More Inclusive Community: The Legacy of Female Reformers in the Progressive State,” in The Progressives’ Century: Political Reform, Constitutional Government and the Modern American State, ed. Stephen Skowronek, Stephen M. Engel, and Bruce Ackerman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 219–42. 100 See James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

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and the state, and the females who went into the field as field matrons, were involved in the large-scale project of extending federal power over American Indians, and indirectly, in state building. Without the participation of females, entering the home, teaching gender roles in home and school, and shaping acceptable American Indian families would have been unthinkable.

Chapter 15

The Quaker Indian Boarding Schools: Facing Our History and Ourselves Paula Palmer The reason I began researching the Quaker Indian schools is because ­Native American organizations are asking for it. The National Native American ­Boarding School Healing Coalition is working to bring healing to Native American individuals, families, and communities that continue to suffer debilitating consequences of the policy of forced assimilation that was carried out by means of the Indian boarding schools. Healing processes are already underway in some Native communities, emerging from each group’s own healing traditions and responding to their own needs. But for healing to occur on a larger scale, the Boarding School Healing Coalition is also proposing and promoting a national Truth and Reconciliation process. Canada recently completed such a process for their residential schools; the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report called their residential school system “cultural genocide,” and prescribed actions to be taken at all levels of government and civil society to compensate First Nations peoples and to support healing. Canada’s actions are in line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states in Article 8: Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture….[Nation] states shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of and redress for any ­action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities.1 In our country, the Boarding School Healing Coalition is hoping to bring about a Truth, Reconciliation, and Healing process that can serve as such a “mechanism” to redress the harm caused by the policy of forced assimilation. The first step in Truth, Reconciliation and Healing is truth-telling. The Coalition is asking churches to bring forward our piece of the Truth, the history of each 1 http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf, p. 5. (Accessed February 15, 2017.)

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_016

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denomination’s participation in the boarding school era. This is the work that I have begun on behalf of Quakers. The Coalition is also providing a safe space where Native Americans can bring forward their testimonies – the experiences of students in the boarding schools, and of parents, children, and grandchildren of boarding school students. Important information is also emerging from scientific studies on the effects of psychological trauma like the trauma that many Native children experienced in the boarding schools. Studies are showing, for example, that such trauma can be passed from one generation to the next.2 This means that the boarding schools of the 19th century are still affecting Native people today. By bringing all of these pieces of the Truth together, the Coalition hopes to build a foundation for seeking justice, redress, and healing. This is the context and the motivation for my research on the Quaker Indian Boarding Schools. As far as we know, I am the first person to undertake this research on behalf of a Christian denomination that was involved in the Indian boarding schools. The Coalition hopes other churches will follow. For me as a Quaker, this history is interesting in itself, but more than that it lifts a mirror to the Religious Society of Friends today. A hundred and fifty years ago, Friends responded to the injustices inflicted upon Native peoples in ways that did some good, and much more harm than they knew. My purpose is not to judge these Friends of the 19th and 20th centuries. Rather, my question is for Friends today: Knowing what we know now about the harm that was done, how will we respond to the ongoing suffering in Native American communities, and to the need for healing now? My research has been in two phases: First was a two-week field research trip in August 2015, when I visited the sites of eleven Quaker Indian Schools in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. The field research was followed by four months of bibliographic research in the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College and in Haverford College’s Quaker History Collection. These libraries hold a wealth of primary sources: letters and journals written by Quaker teachers, minutes of Quaker meetings, Quaker publications and other periodicals. What is largely missing, however, are the authentic voices of Native people. Almost anything that was published in the 19th and early 20th centuries was published by white editors who could select pieces for publication that supported their own biases. Public statements by Native people in their own languages had to be translated, and it’s hard to know how accurately this 2 Pember, Mary Annette, “Intergenerational Trauma: Understanding Natives’ Inherited Pain,” Indian Country Today Media Network, 2016. https://www.tribaldatabase.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ICMN-All-About-Generations-Trauma.pdf (Accessed February 16, 2017.)

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was done. I made a concerted effort to bring authentic Native voices from the time period into this paper, but it’s important to be aware of the limitations. I’ve identified plus or minus 30 Quaker Indian schools that operated for periods of time between the year 1796 and 2006 – a span of 210 years. Some of these were day schools and some were boarding schools, and I have to say plus or minus because it depends on how you count them. For example, there was Friend Thomas Battey who kept trying to gather children in his tent while they traveled across the prairie with Chief Kicking Bird’s band of Kiowas – should we count his efforts as a school? Some of the schools changed locations; some of them changed names; some of them started as day schools and evolved into boarding schools and vice versa. Some of them were in operation only a few months; the longest run – in New York – was 86 years. I’ve divided the Quaker Indian School experience into three time periods: 1) Before the Ulysses S. Grant Administration (1796–1868) 2) During the Ulysses S. Grant Administration (1869–1877) 3) After the Ulysses S. Grant Administration (1878–2006) The Grant Administration is the key to this chronology because under President Grant, Quakers were hired to serve as Indian Agents and to manage ­Indian boarding schools as direct employees of the federal government. This official collaboration sets the Grant Administration apart from the earlier and later periods. 1

Before the Ulysses S. Grant Administration, 1796–1868

The first Quaker Indian Schools were in New York, where Friends worked among the Oneida, Stockbridge, and Seneca peoples. In 1791, the Seneca chief Cornplanter wrote to Philadelphia Quakers: Brothers… we cannot teach our children what we perceive their situation requires them to know, and we therefore ask you to instruct some of them. We wish them to be instructed to read and to write and such other things as you teach your own children, and especially teach them to love peace.3 In response, Yearly Meetings sent small groups of Friends to live first among the Oneidas and then the Senecas. They opened day schools for both girls and boys 3 The Cornplanter, Letter to the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and their Reply, Bulletin of Friends Historical Association, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Autumn 1936), pp. 86–87.

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that operated for a few years among the Oneidas and several decades among the Senecas. In his review of this period, Friend Rayner Kelsey wrote: “These schools were not greatly appreciated by the Indians and often had very few scholars, the boys’ school even being entirely without attenders at some periods.”4 Seneca attitudes toward the Quakers fluctuated. At times, the people divided into pro-Quaker and anti-Quaker camps. In 1851, Orthodox Friends decided to build a boarding school so that they wouldn’t have to, in Kelsey’s words, “depend on the caprice of the Indian children and their parents for attendance.”5 In the boarding school, in addition to their classroom lessons, the boys were taught farming and industrial skills and the girls were taught homemaking. Their labor contributed to the maintenance of the farm and the dormitories. Teacher Susan Wood expressed the school’s intent in a letter dated May 26, 1853: “We are satisfied it is best to take the children when small, and then if kept several years, they would scarcely, I think, return to the indolent and untidy ways of their people.”6 This was the greatest fear of the Quaker teachers – that in spite of their efforts, the children might “lapse hopelessly into the old shiftless savage life,” – again in the words of Friend Rayner Kelsey.7 The Tunesassa Boarding School was in operation from 1852 to 1938, an 86-year run which was the longest, by far, among the Quaker Indian Schools. Quakers believed in education. They had been building schools for their own children for centuries. They were very concerned that Native people could be cheated – and would be cheated – by corrupt government officials and land-hungry, alcohol-toting settlers and traders, if they could not speak and understand English. Quakers frequently accompanied the Senecas to treaty conferences to be sure that they understood the proceedings and the documents. Their schools emphasized the teaching of English language and literacy along with elementary arithmetic and geography. Students who memorized entire chapters of the Bible were held in highest regard by the Quaker teachers. The Haverford College Quaker Collection includes a ledger book from the Tunesassa Boarding School. Teachers recorded the students’ names, their parents’ names, their addresses, and enrollment dates, and there was a column for observations.8 Some of the observations read: 4 Rayner Wickersham Kelsey, Friends and the Indians 1655–1917 (Philadelphia: Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs, 1917), p. 99. 5 Ibid. 6 Lois Barton, A Quaker Promise Kept: Philadelphia Friends’ Work with the Allegany Senecas 1795–1960 (Eugene, Ore.: Spencer Butte Press, 1990), p. 34. 7 Kelsey, Friends and the Indians, pp. 108–109. 8 Records of Children at Tunesassa, [1879]-1938 (a few entried earlier) Loc.: AA47.Inscribed inside on flyleaf as “Records of Indian Children at Tunesassa B.S. Tunesassa, Cattaraugus Co., New York. 1888, Quaker Collection, Haverford College.

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Ran away … Ran away (fourth time)… Married a white man… Sent home for persistent disobedience… Went home when father died… Went to Carlisle… Taken to Buffalo hospital for TB treatment… Graduated with honors… Killed on the railroad when drunk… Expelled for immorality… Unable to adapt herself. In the early 1800s, members of Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s Indian Committee began visiting the Shawnee people in Ohio, at the request of their chiefs. Several Friends stayed for periods of time to build grist mills and offer instruction in farming and animal husbandry. By 1822 they had built a school near Wapakoneta. They boarded an average of 10 to 15 Shawnee students there over a nine-year period, until the Shawnees were forced to move west under terms of the 1831 treaty. The Quakers vigorously protested the forced removal of the Shawnees from Ohio, and also the Senecas from New York. Thanks in part to their efforts, the Senecas retained two out of four of their New York reservations. Failing to prevent the Shawnees’ removal from Ohio, the Quakers there followed the Shawnees to Kansas and built a boarding school for them there, just across the Missouri River. During the first half of the 19th century, Christian missionaries from almost all the denominations fanned out across the West, establishing missions and schools, partially supported with funds allocated by the federal government to “civilize and Christianize the Indians.” This was the common terminology, “civilize and Christianize,” and it was the common goal of the churches and the government. For the other denominations, the first goal was to Christianize, to save souls, so they set out to learn Native languages, translate the Bible, and convert Native people to Christianity. By contrast, the Quakers’ first priority was to “civilize.” They believed, in Biblical terms, that the ground must be prepared before the Seed is sown. A Quaker teacher to the Caddoes and Kiowas, Thomas Battey, wrote: It has long been my opinion, that to present the sublime doctrines of the gospel to these untutored people, without a preliminary work of preparation having been first accomplished, might be comparable to casting ‘pearls before swine,’ or sowing good seed on the ‘stony ground’: it would not be likely to be productive of the best results.9

9 Thomas Battey, Life and Adventures of a Quaker Among the Indians (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1875), pp. 313–314.

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A more elegant expression of the same idea is found in a Memorial to President Grant, written by the Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs Having Charge of the Northern Superintendency, 10th month 30th day, 1870: Whilst we, in our practical way, are endeavoring to present to the Indians a civilization that is the fruit of Christianity, believing that as they are made to understand the value of the fruit, they will more easily be led to seek the seed from whence it springs, we do not interfere with the labor of the religious missions we find amongst them, recognizing the right of the Indians, as well as the white man, to choose his religion according to the dictates of his conscience, so long as it is not subversive of public morals, and does not infringe upon the rights of others.10 For the Quakers, preparing the ground meant changing everything about the Native peoples’ ways of life: their dwellings, their sustenance, their clothes, their hair, their language, their gender roles, their economy, their names, their marital practices – almost everything, says Quaker historian Thomas Hamm of Earlham College, except their religion.11 The question of which should come first, Christianizing or civilizing, played out in the mission schools, where some of the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists and Catholics began teaching in their students’ own languages, but Quakers insisted on English immersion, believing it to be a necessary prerequisite for the planting of the Seed. 2

During the Grant Presidency, 1869–1877

Upon his election, President Grant initiated a new policy toward Native peoples, which he called the “Peace Policy,” or sometimes the “Quaker Policy.” Delegations of Orthodox and Hicksite Friends actually proposed this policy to Grant before he was inaugurated. Their goal was to end the Indian Wars west of the Mississippi, call back the Cavalry, and spare the lives of both Indians and settlers. The government would make peace with tribes that agreed to live on reservations, give up hunting, take up farming, and send their children to school. These conditions were written into the treaties. In exchange, 10

11

Minutes of the Joint Indian committee (Hicksite), pym, Baltimore, 10th month 30th day, 1870, p. 13, quoting a Memorial to the President of the United States, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Jan 11, 1871, from the Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs having charge of the Northern Superintendency. Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, Box RG4.​ Thomas Hamm, HIcksite Quakerism, 1827–1900 (forthcoming).

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the government would guarantee the tribes’ security and deliver commodities and annuity payments on a regular schedule. President Grant would appoint Christian men, nominated by the churches, to serve as Indian agents on the reservations, ending the notoriously corrupt system of political patronage. The Indian agents would enforce the treaties and facilitate the work of, again, “Christianizing and civilizing” the Native people. Quakers participated enthusiastically in carrying out the Peace Policy. President Grant appointed Hicksite Friends as Indian agents on six reservations in Nebraska, and Orthodox Friends (under the auspices of the Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs) as agents on ten reservations in Kansas and Indian Territory. Another 57 reservations came under the authority of other Christian denominations. The Quaker agents hired Quaker teachers, both men and women, and they immediately started building schools. During the Grant Administration, Quakers managed at least 25 schools on the western reservations (as stated earlier, it’s hard to know how to count them, since some changed names and locations, or were in operation sporadically). Some were day schools, but most were boarding schools. Enrollments in the Quaker schools ranged between 10 and 90 students, and attendance averaged around 65 percent for those enrolled. The percentage of school-aged children whose parents enrolled them in school varied widely among the Table 1

Church-managed Indian Agencies during the Grant Presidency

Methodists, fourteen agencies in the Pacific North- west (54,743 Indians) Presbyterian, nine in the Southwest (38,069) Episcopalians, eight in the Dakotas (26,929) Catholics, seven (17,856) Hicksite Friends, six in Nebraska (6,598) Orthodox Friends, ten in Kansas & Indian Territory (17,724) Baptists, five in Utah, Idaho and the Indian Territory (40,800) Reformed Dutch, five (8,118) Congregationalists, three (14,476) Christians, two (8,287) Unitarians, two (3,800) American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Indian Territories of Oklahoma (1,496) Lutherans, one (273)a a Native American Rights Fund, “Let All that is Indian in you Die!,” Legal Review Newsletter Vol. 38, No. 2, Summer/Fall 2013, p. 6.

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d­ ifferent tribes. At the end of the Grant administration, 650 children were enrolled in the Hicksite schools in Nebraska, and 1,000 children were attending Orthodox schools in Kansas and Indian Territory.12 Quakers much preferred and promoted the concept of the “Manual Labor Boarding Schools,” also called “Industrial Boarding Schools.” In 1870, a visiting delegation from Ohio and Genesee Yearly Meetings reported, It is the opinion of all the [Quaker] agents that the Industrial School is the best adapted to the wants of the Indians. They will then be removed from the contaminating influences of the home circle, where they lose at night the good impressions they have received during the day.13 In the Industrial schools, students spent half days in classrooms and half days working on the schools’ farms and in the dormitories and kitchens. Thus, they would learn practical skills and also contribute their labor for the maintenance of the schools. Many Native parents saw this practice as demeaning and would not send their children to these schools. Wilson Hobbs, a Quaker teacher at the Shawnee Boarding School in Kansas, complained: “The boys did not like to work, and the hardest part of my duty was to keep them at it.”14 Mahlon Stubbs, a Quaker teacher with the Kanza people in central Kansas confessed that he spent more time chasing after boys who ran away from their labors than in the classroom teaching them. Think about what these schools were demanding of the children: For centuries, in most of the Plains tribes men had been warriors and hunters. Women had been gardeners and gatherers. In the manual labor schools, the boys were forced to do the farming, which​was commonly seen as women’s work, and the girls were brought indoors from the gardens to the kitchens and sewing rooms. The children were required to overturn the gender roles of their tribes in a single generation. Quakers were very hard on Native men who resisted becoming farmers; they described them as idle, lazy, good for nothing. They put the whole burden of accomplishing the gender role transformation on the children. Wilson Hobbs, teacher at the Shawnee Mission boarding school in Kansas, gives this glimpse of a child’s first day at school: 12 13 14

United States Office of Indian Affairs, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1887. Second Annual Report of the Joint Delegation appointed by the committees on the Indian concern of the yearly meetings of Ohio and Genesee, Philadelphia 5th mo 6th 1870, p. 31. Wilson Hobbs, “The Friends’ Establishment in Kansas Territory,” Transactions, Kansas State Historical Society Vol viii, 1903–04, p. 251.

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The service to a new pupil was to trim his hair closely; then, with soap and water, to give him or her the first lesson in godliness, which was a good scrubbing, and a little red precipitate on the scalp, to supplement the use of a fine-toothed comb; then he was furnished with a suit of new clothes, and taught how to put them on and off. They all emerged from this ordeal as shy as peacocks just plucked.15 A child’s perspective on this experience is given in “The School Days of an Indian Girl,” written in 1900 by Zitkala-Sa, a Lakota woman who entered White’s Institute, a Quaker boarding school in Indiana, at age eight. She wrote, I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking and scratching wildly. In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast in a chair. I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. …Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!… I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me…. for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder.16 In his book From the Deep Woods to Civilization the Lakota physician Charles Eastman remembers the humiliation he felt at the Santee School in Nebraska: “We youthful warriors were held up and harassed with…those little words – rat, cat, and so forth – until not a semblance of our native dignity and self-respect was left.”17 Another common Quaker practice was giving the children English names. In one of her first letters home after becoming a teacher on the Iowa reservation in Nebraska, Mary B. Lightfoot wrote, Tell H. and C. I have named two little boys for them. I am giving them English names, as I cannot think of learning theirs. I have named several [children] after Friends in the East. When I get through I will send a list.18 15 Ibid. 16 Zitkala-Sa, “The School Days of an Indian Girl,” American Indian Stories (Washington, d.c.: Hayworth Publishing, 1921), p. 55. 17 Charles A. Eastman, From the Deep Woods to Civilization (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1916), p. 46. 18 Letter from Mary B. Lightfoot to W. & R. Hawkins, published in Friends Intelligencer, Aug 7, 1869 (26,23), p. 364.

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Friend Albert Green visited the Iowa reservation several decades after his stint as a Quaker Indian Agent in Nebraska. Among the Iowas, he met whole families named Lightfoot, Hallowell, Foulke, Green, and other prominent Quaker surnames – the same names, he wrote, as one would find in the meeting houses of Philadelphia.19 What did this re-naming mean to the children? In his memoir, called “The Names,” N. Scott Momaday writes about the origin and meaning of his Kiowa name: My name is Tsoai-talee. I am, therefore, Tsoai-talee; therefore I am. The storyteller Pohd-lohk gave me the name Tsoai-talee. He believed that a man’s life proceeds from his name, in the way that a river proceeds from its source.… I am.20 By taking away the children’s “I am,” the Quaker teachers forced them to give up their very identity. Joseph Webster, the Quaker agent among the Santee Sioux, put it succinctly: “The whole character of the Indian must be changed.”21 In the Quaker schools, students would not be allowed to speak their own languages, wear their own clothes, answer to their own names, participate in tribal dances and ceremonies, or go on the buffalo hunts with their families. The Quakers saw it as an either/or situation: you are Indian, or you are civilized. These were mutually exclusive categories. Of course, Native people resisted. Anthropologist Peter Nabokov quotes a Kickapoo father telling a Quaker school recruiter: “Take that axe and knock him on the head. I will gladly bury him. I would rather you do that than take him to school.”22 Indeed, when the government built a school on the Kickapoo reservation, the people moved as far away from it as they could and rebuffed the efforts of the Quaker teacher Elizabeth Test for years. She wrote impassioned letters imploring the means to compel Kickapoo parents to send their children to school, even against their will. In 1894 she wrote: I know it will sadly grieve [Kickapoo parents] to part with their children, but … every day’s delay is of great loss to them…. There is not one of their 19 20 21 22

Letter to J. Russell Hayes, Manager and Librarian, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore, from Albert Green, Sept 23, 1935, p.3. N. Scott Momaday, The Names (Tucson Ariz: University of Arizona Press, 1976), Forward. Quoted in Thomas Hamm, HIcksite Quakerism, 1827–1900 (forthcoming). Peter Nabakov,ed., Native American Testimony (New York: Penguin, 1978), p. 217.

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whole number who can speak English…. In this condition they are already surrounded by whites, are being defrauded of the little money they have, are tempted continually with strong drink [and are] not disciplined to resist temptation. [They] often yield, and many who are not guilty are arrested and carried off to jail. Their ignorance renders them helpless.23 Feeling similar urgency for the Native children to be educated, at least two Quaker Indian agents threatened to withhold a family’s food rations if their children were not enrolled in school. Gradually, most parents acquiesced, as did the Kanza Chief Allegawaho, who said in 1871: “White men are all around us and we are cramped and pressed on every hand…. I believe my people will soon be impoverished. This I do not want to see. This is the darkest period in our history.”24 He then enrolled his son in the Quaker school. The child would become the first Kanza chief known by an English name, Albert Taylor. The federal government paid most of the teachers’ salaries, usually around $500 a year. Most of these funds were taken out of the tribes’ annuity payments that had been established in the treaties. Some teachers were paid by Quaker meetings and organizations in the Midwest and on the East coast. For years, John Watson and his daughter Eva invested their own salaries into improvements at the Hillside Mission Boarding School in Skiatook, O ­ klahoma. Many teachers wrote heart-breaking letters to their Friends back home, describing the impoverished state of the Indian populations and especially the children who, on many reservations, were dying of exposure, starvation and illness. Quaker meetings and organizations raised money year after year and sent literally tons of cloth, clothing, school and farming supplies to the Quaker-run Indian agencies in the West. Friends kept meticulous accounts of these donated items, down to the last thimble. According to an 1885 report to the Indian Commission by the Hicksite superintendent Barclay White, Hicksite Friends alone raised over $83,000 for the agencies in Nebraska during the Grant administration. The Friends who answered the call to serve as teachers did so at some risk to themselves and their families. During the Grant Presidency, the Utes, Modocs, Kiowas, Comanches, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Nez Perce peoples were still at war with the United States. Lakota and Cheyenne warriors defeated 23 24

Letter from Elizabeth Test to CC Painter. Indian Rights Association, December 1894, I­ ndian Rights Association Records (Collection 1523), Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Parks, Ronald D., The Darkest Period: The Kanza Indians and Their Last Homeland, 1846– 1873 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), pp. 225–6.

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Custer at Little Bighorn in 1876 – during Grant’s second term. The Nez Perce Chief Joseph finally surrendered in 1877. There was fighting between some of the tribes, too, especially as the buffalo, so critical for their survival, became scarce. During President Grant’s first term, US Cavalrymen and commercial hunters killed five million buffalo on the Great Plains, bringing the species nearly to extinction. The Quaker families, as well as the reservation-bound Indians, were vulnerable to crop failures, prairie fires, droughts, blizzards, malaria, and tuberculosis. Several Quaker couples buried one or more of their children in the dusty cemeteries behind the meeting houses. Some teachers used their own paychecks to purchase medicines, food and clothing when the tribes’ annuities didn’t arrive. Teacher Elizabeth Test camped in a tent for months in order to nurse Kickapoo elders back to health. A Kickapoo child whom Teacher Test had adopted at age three and raised, remembered: On long drives in her buggy, Teacher would waken suddenly and check the reins, stopping right in the middle of the road, saying, ‘Whoa, whoa! Where are we?’ … I never understood the fatigue that came over her with long busy days. Winter or summer, rain or shine, never too cold or too hot to make the weekly visits to the Indians scattered for miles about. [She slept] in their wickiups, [and took] care of the sick and those in need.25 Some of the Quaker teachers stayed a year, fulfilled their contract, and left. Others stayed until the end of their lives, and are buried in cemeteries among the graves of their Native students. One such Friend was Rachel Kirk, who wrote, “The work of Friends among the Indians lies nearer my heart than anything else. It has been the greatest part of my life for 16 years. I have given up everything to it.”26 3

After the Grant Administration, 1877–2006

After the Grant presidency, Quakers gradually turned the schools over to the federal government or closed them. The administration of Rutherford B. Hayes was less sympathetic to the Christian Indian agents and refused to appoint the men that Friends nominated. In 1885 the last Hicksite Indian Agent in 25 26

Myra Esther Frye Bartlett, “Whoa! Where are we?,” Indian Progress, November 1950. Letter from Rachel Kirk to EM Wistar February 1, 1895, Haverford​College Quaker Collection,​Ms Coll 1003, box 2.

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­ ebraska resigned, bringing to an end the involvement of Hicksite Quakers in N the schooling of Native children. In Oklahoma Territory, the Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs (aecfia) turned some of their schools over to the federal government. Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, which was founded by Friends in 1871, is still in operation today under the Bureau of Indian Education, with an all-Indian teaching staff and 550 students. The Quaker school in Shawneetown was converted into an Indian sanitorium for tuberculosis patients. The government expanded the Quaker Seneca Indian Boarding School in Wyandotte, Oklahoma, and kept it running until 1980. Friends taught Bible classes in the Wyandotte school until it closed. They also gave the students Christmas gifts that were donated by monthly meetings across the country. Toward the end of the 19th century, the aecfia gradually shifted its emphasis from Indian education to more general missionary work: evangelizing, building meeting houses, holding meetings for worship and Sabbath schools, and teaching farming and household skills to the adult men and women who would accept it. With the passage of the Dawes Act in 1887 and subsequent legislation, many Native peoples lost their communal lands and were forced onto individual plots called allotments. Un-allotted land was opened up to white settlers, and they poured into Oklahoma. By 1895, Native tribes throughout the West had lost two thirds of their land. In Oklahoma Territory, the Quaker Indian schools filled up with white children. As public schools became available, the aecfia closed its mission schools. Eva Watson at the Hillside School in Skiatook, Oklahoma, was the last to do so in 1913. Outside Oklahoma, however, the Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs started some new ventures in Indian education. In Indiana and Iowa, boarding schools that were endowed by the Quaker philanthropist, Josiah White, had been built to house and educate poor children and orphans. In the early 1880’s, the government contracted with these White’s Manual Labor Institutes to take in Native children from the western tribes. The government paid $167 per student per year. Quaker organizations subsidized the education of additional Native children in the White’s Institutes, bringing enrollment to 130 Native students in 1885. In the 1890’s, for financial and ethical reasons, the Quaker managers decided to end their relationship with the federal government. They transferred the Indian students at the White’s Institutes to other schools and went back to serving non-Indian student populations. During the 1880s, the aecfia also managed five-day schools and established a boarding school on the Eastern Cherokee reservation in North Carolina. After twelve years of Quaker management the government took over the boarding school and kept it running until 1954. In Alaska, Quaker missionaries ­established missions and schools among the Kake, Tlingit, and Kotzebue

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­ ative peoples. By 1920, these schools were handed over to other Christian N missions or to the government. In the 1880s while Quakers were gradually laying down their own schools in the West, they enthusiastically supported the government’s off-reservation schools like the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Several Quakers served as teachers at Carlisle, and many Quaker families in Pennsylvania boarded Carlisle students during the summer months, putting them to work on their farms and in their households. The students’ experiences in this so-called “outings” program varied. Some felt they were being used as slave labor; others formed lifelong friendships with their host families. It’s worth pointing out a few differences between the off-reservation government boarding schools like Carlisle and the Quaker boarding schools. The Quaker schools were much smaller. Except in the case of the White’s Institutes, they were located on the reservations, which means that most of the children knew each other and spoke the same language. Their parents delivered them to the school, under coercion certainly, but at least the parents knew where their children were and could visit them at any time. The separation was not as extreme as it was in the off-reservation schools. I found no evidence of physical or sexual abuse in the Quaker schools, although I’m not sure where such evidence would be recorded if it had occurred. The Quaker schools were highly disciplined, but they were not run on the military model that governed Carlisle. The goals of the Quaker schools and the off-reservation schools were the same, however: to assimilate Native children and eliminate Native cultures. The most recent Quaker Indian schools were a boarding school at the Rough Rock Friends Mission on the Navajo Nation, which was run by the Rocky Mountain Yearly Meeting of Evangelical Friends for just a few years in the 1950s, and a school for mowa Choctaw children in Alabama, which was operated by aecfia from 1987 to 2006. These schools were not a part of the forced assimilation program; their relationships with the Native communities and their goals, methods, and impacts were quite different from the earlier schools. Evangelical Friends continue to support a mission church at Rough Rock, and North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Friends United Meeting) continues to support extra-curricular activities and tutoring in the mowa Choctaw community. 4

How Friends Assessed Their Experience in Indian Education

Returning now to the height of Quaker involvement in Indian education, during the late 1800s and early 1900s, how did Quakers at that time assess their

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accomplishments in the Indian schools? They could boast of some star students, some of whom became defenders of the Indian boarding schools and proponents of assimilation. For example: – The Lakota child, Zitkala-Sa, attended White’s Labor Industrial School in Indiana and Earlham College and went on to become a renowned author whose stories appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. She taught music classes for a time at Carlisle, but in some of her writing she bitterly criticized the treatment of Indian children in the boarding schools (without naming the schools). – “Steamboat” Frank Modoc became the first full-blooded Native American Quaker minister; his conversion was brought about by his daughter who attended the Quaker Modoc school. Frank Modoc was a very influential preacher among his people, and the Modoc meeting became the largest Quaker meeting in Oklahoma Territory. – Myra Frye, named after a New England Friend, is the Kickapoo child who was raised by Teacher Elizabeth Test. She had a brief career as a vaudeville singer and then founded Lawansa Tepee, a cultural center for Native Americans in Los Angeles, under the care of California Yearly Meeting. In a 1950 remembrance of Teacher Test, Myra wrote: “When I am faced with decisions to make, I find I try to decide through how [Teacher] would have done.”27 But most Quaker teachers despaired of having any lasting impact on their students. Wilson Hobbs, who taught at Shawnee Mission School in Kansas, sent some of his most promising students to Ohio and Indiana to extend their education in hopes of grooming them to become teachers, but, he complained: “The Indian traits were never sufficiently stamped out of any of them to make suitable examples for the children.”28 Anne Kent, who was teaching at the Iowa Indian Boarding School, despaired that all the Iowa girls fell back into the ways of their people once they left school. She begged Philadelphia Friends to find a place in the East for her 14-year-old star student, Mary Dorian. Mary seemed proud of her achievements in school. At Friends Historical Library I held in my hands a letter that Mary wrote to her former teacher, Mary B. Lightfoot, in November 1876: “Dear Friend, …. I wish you would come see us. You don’t know how glad we would be to see you. I can wash clothes, wash dishes, and scrub floors, tables and benches, and I can sew on the machine. I made a dress for myself, 27 28

Bartlett, “Whoa! Where are we?” Hobbs, Wilson, MD, “The Friends’ Establishment in Kansas Territory,” Transactions, Kansas State Historical Society Vol viii, 1903–04, p. 260.

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a whole dress last summer. In school I can do addition, ­subtraction, multiplication, division, long division and compound numbers and I am studying Geography & mental arithmetic…. From your friend, Mary L. Dorian” The new teacher, Miss Kent, hoped that Mary could be “saved” from the fate of the other Iowa girls. She wrote to friends in Philadelphia: “It is very distasteful to me to have [Mary] go back to the Indian life, as all the educated women here have done, and I feel that she will not be an exception, if she remains here.”29 A year later, superintendent Barclay White confirmed the teacher’s fears. Mary had, he wrote: “left the Iowa Home, cast off citizens dress, and clad herself in Indian costume.” Superintendent White thought he knew why Mary had left. A visiting Native girl her own age had shamed Mary for her “white” clothes and manners and told her she wasn’t an Indian anymore. Mary had to choose, and she chose home.30 “To some degree…every tribesperson had to face the question of how white to become,” wrote Peter Nabokov.31 No matter how much schooling the children completed, in white society, they would never be white. In Native society, could they ever be Native again? Many children were deprived of the precious years of bonding with their families. They didn’t learn the stories, songs, dances, games, and skills of their people. Some didn’t even have a name. The Choctaw poet, H. Lee Karalis, writes in the voice of a student who returns from boarding school: You’re an Indian, My father said to me. Go dance with ‘em. He pushed my small body Into the smiling rhythms, But I did not know them. Or my name. I remember his disappointment As I walked away from the crowd, Embarrassed by his words…. My father knew his name, But he never gave me mine.32 29 30 31 32

Anne R. Kent to Deborah F. Wharton, 3mo 2nd, 1876, Series 1: Correspondence, Lightfoot Manuscripts, RG5/184, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. Journal of Barclay White, mss 003/146​, Vol. 2, entry dated 2nd day 10th month, 1877. Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. Peter Nabakov, ed., Native American Testimony (New York: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 261. Karalis, H. Lee, “A Different Rhythm,” Genocide of the Mind, MariJo Moore, ed., New York: Nation Books, 2003, p. 171–72.

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Certain of the gains that awaited their students for becoming more “civilized,” the Quaker teachers could not comprehend the losses the children suffered as they became less Indian. 5 Conclusions Let me try to summarize what I have gathered from the books, articles, letters, and journals of Quaker teachers in the Indian schools. Quakers saw themselves as the reformers of their time. They condemned the government’s brutality and dishonesty in its dealings with the Indians and lamented the miserable conditions on the reservations. They called themselves “Friends of the Indians,” setting themselves apart from their fellow citizens who were urging the u.s. Cavalry to exterminate the western tribes and make the continent safe for Manifest Destiny. They lived at a time when Social Darwinism was becoming a popular way for European-Americans to justify the decline of “inferior” races and the natural selection of “superior” ones. Against public opinion that said Native people could not be civilized and would inevitably die out one way or another, the Quakers believed that Native people could be civilized, they could be rescued from their “savage” state and become “useful citizens.” Quakers realized that this transformation would have to come about through the children. Quaker teachers who started day schools on the reservations quickly lobbied for construction of boarding facilities to keep the ­children away from the “bad” influence of their parents and communities. They called the boarding schools “homes,” supplanting the children’s own homes. They called the residents of those homes (the Indian children and the Quaker staff) “families,” supplanting the children’s real families. They gave the children English names and western clothes, supplanting their Native identity. They believed that they were doing this in the very best interests of the individual children and of the entire Indian race. In all my reading, I found only one instance where someone questioned the goal of forcing Native people to abandon their entire way of life and adopt ­Euro-Christian “civilization.” In 1897, the Friends Intelligencer published a report by Anna Beecher Scoville, a young teacher of Indian students at the Hampton Institute. She had visited the Sac and Fox people in the West who, she said, had split apart. The Sacs stayed in Kansas and followed the prescribed path to “civilization.” The Foxes rejected white “civilization,” left Kansas, and purchased land in Iowa. Miss Scoville reported: They rejected the white man’s house, the white man’s dress, the white man’s civilization, the white man’s God, and the white man’s vices.

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How have they succeeded? They have lived surrounded by white people, but they have lived as Indians. They have supported themselves, receiving but little money from the government; they have lived carefully, and have worked hard in their way, making mats and baskets, weaving, and working in silver…. The family relation is preserved. They boast that there is not a half-breed under fifty years of age in the band. They earn their living as Indians; they dress as Indians; they speak as Indians. As Indians they stand and hope to die.33 Miss Scoville had gotten a glimpse of a different path to health, happiness, and prosperity, a uniquely indigenous path. It would take three-quarters of a century for her insight to shift national policy from forced assimilation to selfdetermination for Native peoples. But Miss Scoville’s observations were interpreted very differently at the time. The person she considered “the greatest missionary in the region” told her that the independent Fox community she had visited was “the most discouraging spot on the face of this earth.” Discouraging, yes, to the Christians who believed there was one and only one way to a life of prosperity, health, and happiness, and who wanted to offer those blessings to the next generation of Indians. They could not see that there might be different and equally valid and valuable ways of living, or that Native cultures had intrinsic value. Why not? Because, I think, they held the same assumptions of European-Christian superiority that were held by the Americans who were calling for the extermination of Indian people. The Quakers would not kill Indians, but “for their own good,” they would do their best to exterminate Indian-ness. Fortunately, they were not successful. Native people have kept six hundred unique cultures alive throughout this land. Despite the best efforts of their teachers, 150 Native languages are still being spoken and others are being revived. Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is learning her Potowatomi language for the first time as an adult, says, “It’s almost as if the air is waiting to hear this language that had been lost for so long.”34 This is one form that healing takes in Native communities. Much healing is needed. The wounds in Native families go back many generations. Through painful testimony and scientific study, we are learning how those wounds have afflicted generation after generation of Native families and 33 34

Friends Intelligencer Oct 30, 1897 (54, 44) p. 752. Interview with Krista Tippett, “On Being” radio program, February 25, 2016, http://on being.org/programs/robin-wall-kimmerer-the-intelligence-in-all-kinds-of-life/ (Accessed February 28, 2017).

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continue to do so now in the form of illness, depression, suicide, substance abuse, violence, and poverty. Echoes of the boarding schools are present today in the child welfare systems of many states, where Native children are systematically removed from their homes and put into foster care with white families. Discriminatory detention, sentencing, and incarceration practices prevent thousands of Native mothers and fathers from raising their own children. Effectively orphaned, these children are currently housed in boarding schools run by the Bureau of Indian Education. Native organizations that are working to heal these wounds need our support. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition invites us to work with them as allies. We can support the Coalition as individuals, as churches, as colleges, and as organizations. The first thing they ask of us is to learn the truth and to acknowledge the harm that has been done. This is a first step toward healing and right relationship that we can take. As I said at the outset, our purpose in lifting up this history is not to shake our fingers at the Quakers or Catholics, or Methodists of past centuries. Our purpose is to know the truth and then hold a mirror to our own faces and ask, “Who are we today? How can we put ourselves on the right side of history now?”

Chapter 16

A Shared Vision for Healing John Echohawk The Native American Rights Fund (narf) is the nation’s premier Native American nonprofit law firm dedicated to asserting and defending the rights of Indian tribes, organizations, and individuals nationwide. For over 45 years narf has been a leader in development of Indian law and policy in pursuit of those rights. In recent years, we at narf have taken on work to help bring about healing in our native communities from the ongoing harms that we experience as a result from the United States’ Indian industrial or boarding school policy of the 19th and 20th centuries. I would like to think that the existence of this conference itself was in some way at least encouraged by our call to the various denominations involved, along with the federal government, in the development and carrying out of that policy. At a minimum, the fact that Friends have convened to take a deeper and critical look at the involvement of your predecessors fits squarely within our challenge that those responsible for the policy are best suited to undertake the investigation and truth-telling about that involvement and its impacts. Such inquiry is a critical first step in any reconciliation process, and I commend and thank all of you who have shared in the efforts to start to willingly take up the inquiry. 1

Setting the Stage

Much of what you all have started here—the work you are undertaking by shedding a light of honesty on what is sometimes a painful past (whether the pain inflicted was intentional or not)—serves the desirable end goal of shared healing. Healing requires telling the truth. However, in many cases up until now the truth has either been purposely hidden, unintentionally covered by the advancing of time, or forgotten. Yet awareness of the truth is required for real healing, on both sides. The victims may only begin their healing process once they understand what has hurt them and how it affects them. They continue to only exist in reaction mode until then. On the other hand, a wrongdoer (or the successor to or beneficiary of a wrongdoer’s interests) cannot be free of the chains of the wrongs committed until responsibility for them is accepted. Acknowledgement of the truth provides a link between both sides,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004388178_017

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wrongdoer and victim. Acknowledgement is the first step of accepting responsibility on the part of the wrongdoer, and it provides validation of the victims’ experience. In some cases, a perpetrator’s acknowledging a wrong might actually provide the spark required for a victim’s growth towards healing. All of this should come as no surprise to those familiar with healing conflicts between groups of people. It is virtually universally recognized that one early required step of reconciliation, in any model, is a step of truth-telling. Notice how this is not a call for one side to actually heal the other. Rather, it is a call for each side to heal itself. Too much of the wrongs of the past were, as we have seen in many of the presentations here, conceived and advanced as the attempts of one side to help the other in the best way it knew how. Yet the actions taken in pursuit of those good intentions resulted in harm. The efforts went too far by attempting to solve problems by changing the others who were being harmed, rather than examining how one’s own actions might be contributing to the suffering of others and then attempting to change one’s own actions in a way that would not cause that same suffering. In retrospect, it is finally becoming clear to outsiders that the problems for Tribes in the past might often be described as harmful outcomes of well-meaning, but poorly advised, policies of outsiders. 2

narf’s Priorities

At narf our work is driven by five priorities, and our Board of Directors comprised of leaders from across Indian Country help us continue to focus on the work that best serves those priorities. Those Priorities, as established early in our existence and pursued ever since, are: Preserve Tribal Existence Protect Tribal Natural Resources Promote Native American Human Rights Hold Governments Accountable to Native Americans Develop Indian Law and Educate the Public about Indian Rights, Laws, and Issues While these areas are all interrelated and the work each of you are doing may touch on more than one of them, the Promotion of Human Rights and Preservation of Tribal Existence seem most closely aligned with the topics and efforts addressed throughout this conference. By looking at narf’s work in these Priority Areas, we can see how your work fits into the work we do. By understanding our Priorities and some of the work we focus on, you might also begin to anticipate where further help is needed—and how you might

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be able to help. All of this can lead to a vision for how each person and group might contribute to a shared vision for healing from wrongs and injustices of the past. 3

Some of narf’s Work That Is Relevant

Five subcategories of our work protecting Human Rights and Preserving Tribal Existence seem particularly relevant to our shared vision for healing. I will discuss some of the relevant points in succession. 3.1 Indian Education The first subcategory is Indian Education. Our work in Indian Education is rooted in the belief that tribal people have cultural expertise that is of great value in education. This expertise arises from their experience within their communities and comes from a long unbroken string of intergenerational transmission of collectively accumulated wisdom. This entire field really came into being during the Civil Rights era, when Tribes stepped up to regain control over the education of their children. This was done in response to the federal Indian education system’s failures. The federal Indian Education system had yielded terrible result and had institutionalized cultural genocide. In fact, the federal Indian Education system had its roots in the Indian Boarding or Industrial Schools. 3.2 Indian Child Welfare Act Tribal people will continue to advance the best interests of their children because they have a vested interest in the outcome. But others can, and do, help immensely in those efforts. As many of the presentations here have demonstrated, historians can help native people rewrite a more accurate version of our shared history. All the hidden stories should be told—the not-yet-­recovered ones as well as the ones that were brushed under the carpet because what really happened doesn’t match up with the American myth of its own founding and expansion. Quakers and other activists can work for policies, legislation, and funding that allows still more Native control of education for Native children. In this regard, I should acknowledge the critical and ongoing help of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (fcnl) over the years. fcnl has proven a reliable partner and responsible advocate for Indian Education advances, and I suspect it will continue to do so. The approach fcnl takes stands in sharp

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contrast to the bureaucratic and wrongly-guided boarding school policy of the past. We need more advocacy like that which fncl provides. Legal work to support and properly implement the Indian Child Welfare Act (icwa) is another area that has kept us busy at narf in recent years. This Act was initially passed as a remedial measure, to stop another well-intentioned but culturally arrogant (or at least very disrespectful) approach to Native issues. The issue this time was that Indian children were being removed from their families and placed in non-Indian foster and adoptive homes at an alarming rate. The results of such adoptions were proven harmful to the children, in that the children were effectively removed from their cultures and suffered throughout their lives from such disconnection. The adoptions on such a large scale were also harmful to the tribes and the cultures themselves- the effect was a continuation of the industrial school era policy of “rescuing” Indians by eliminating Indian children’s ability to learn and carry on their tribal ways of life. icwa has been under constant attack in recent years, primarily behind the leadership of a coalition of attorneys who make a lot of money on adoptions. We have been fighting back, through narf’s Supreme Court Project. The Supreme Court project tries to help minimize the damage to Indian rights done by a clearly adverse United States Supreme Court that has consistently ruled heavily against Indian interests in cases before it for at least a decade now. We have also been collaborating with other organizations devoted to protection and advancement of the interests of Indian Children, like the Casey Family Foundation and the National Indian Child Welfare Association. The focus of this work has been the promotion of policies that support Tribes’ rights to speak up on behalf of their own children. Here again, historians might help by telling the story about how this attack on Tribal rights is simply a continuation of federal efforts to terminate Tribes by forcing the assimilation of Tribal children. Activists of all sorts can help work to ensure that the protections developed by the best-informed experts and contained in icwa, remain in place. Right now, those protections are under attack from a well-funded group with financial interests in the continued out-placement of our children. We in Indian Country need all the help we can get in this battle. 3.3 Religious Freedom narf’s work to support American Indian and Alaska Native religious freedom (and by extension the religious freedom of a significant number of other groups that are not the large Christian denominations) is long-lived and

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b­ road-ranging. Certainly, well-informed Quakers can relate to Native practitioners’ desires to be free to worship as they see fit—since that is a primary reason Quakers first came to our continent. narf’s current work in this area includes seeking access to, and preservation of, Sacred Places vital to continued worship and cultural functioning. Our current work also includes fighting for the right to express Native cultures and faith in various contexts where that right is challenged, such as the rights to worship while incarcerated, and to wear eagle feathers when graduating from high school if a student’s tradition so provides. Of course, narf’s work in this area also includes supporting the Water Protectors at Standing Rock in their fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline being built under the major waterways of our continent. To date, our support in this case has involved helping the attorneys for the Tribes in the lawsuit by coordinating and agreeing to draft one of the several “friend of the court” briefs that will be required to get as much relevant legal argument in front of the judges. We all face a hard and relentless fight on all fronts by major moneyed interests that are determined to continue to risk the environmental well-being of all of us, in the interest of the corporate bottom line. The opportunities for Quakers to help in this area seem limitless- as long as they are true to their own respect for freedom to worship in one’s own way. With so many sacred places under threat, or barred from meaningful Native access for worship, and so many times when religious liberties of people under partial control of others are infringed. Each of these situations presents an opportunity to help utilizing the best talents one might have available, whether that be advocacy, financial support, or educational support to help foster understanding among the rest of the population about the challenges we routinely face. 3.4 Peacemaking narf’s Indigenous Peacemaking Initiative should also be of interest to many Quakers. Most Tribes currently have their own American-made adversarialprocess court system. But prior to that, tribal communities for millennia dealt with the conflicts that are bound to arise when people live together in close communities. narf’s Peacemaking Initiative is another effort to preserve Tribal existence, this time by supporting Tribal attempts to recover, revive, or reinvigorate traditional ways of dealing with disputes. Despite the demonizing pictures of tribal existence as painted by outsiders in prior decades, our oral histories and tribal cultures tell us that peace itself was a primary value of tribal living, almost universally. In some cases, tribal

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names for their own people translate to mean “peaceful ones.” And as might be expected in smaller communities of people who were viscerally aware of their interdependence for survival, conflicts had to be resolved in ways that did not leave both sides angry with one another, or one side destroyed by the other. In fact, native ways of conflict resolution have been found to yield more lasting results, at less cost than adversarial court systems. This is at least partially because, while the adversarial system is based on the idea that the parties each should present their strongest possible case against the other, and a theoretically neutral party will decide between them who is the victor, traditional peacemaking systems operate much differently. In traditional peacemaking, the parties and all others who have an interest in the outcome are encouraged to participate in seeking a resolution. The issue is framed as one of a relationship between the parties being in need of alteration - in contrast to the adversarial system requiring a fight to the end. Consensus serves as the basis for a final solution, meaning that there is no real winner or loser, and the parties and others involved are more likely to comply with the resolution for the long term because of their role and interests being served in the process. Historians can help contrast the demonizing picture I mentioned previously, of tribal people and cultures being unintelligent and violent. To me, this picture seems only to rationalize the past violence committed against our peoples and our lifeways. A more accurate picture of our ancestral traditions and accomplishments would help to advance the understanding of how a life more conducive to continued existence on this earth is possible. Others can support advancement of more respectful ways of treating each other in general, and of resolving conflict in particular. Tribal traditions can provide models for this way of relating. 3.5 Boarding School Healing Work Some of the previous presentations at this conference have provided an introduction to Quakers’ roles in the Indian Industrial, Boarding, or Manual Labor schools of the previous two centuries. This nationwide policy had lasting impacts from which tribal communities are still recovering today. The mission to “Kill the Indian to Save the Man” was quite effective in severely traumatizing almost all of Indian existence, to say the least. Focusing the efforts on Indian children hit our Tribes where it hurt most. Thankfully, however, we are now at a point in time where recovery from this policy has become a primary focus in many of our communities. Some Quakers, even some of you among us this evening, are among those leading the way to this healing among communities of faith. As discussed before, a comprehensive and honest accounting of what

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really happened is a major step that helps both sides heal from the harms of the past, and we are all starting down that path. Support for boarding school healing work is possible in many different ways, as well. Of course, a true and full historical account is still needed, although a start has been made here and elsewhere. Thousands of children that were taken from their families are unaccounted for. Recently, tribes have renewed interests in returning the remains of their relatives left behind at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the former flagship program for the policy on a national level that is only about 100 miles from where we are today. narf is working with the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, an organization we helped to form from its very beginning (and now that we are hoping is able to carry on as its own independent nonprofit organization) to request a full accounting of all children taken but not returned to their families under this policy. Our efforts have been on both the federal and international levels, through the Department of Interior and various United Nations bodies. The structure, or rather relative lack of structure, with which Quakers are organized nationally can be seen as somewhat of a barrier to denominationwide action such as extensive studies of history and formal acceptance of responsibility for the denomination’s role in the policy and its harms. However, actions already taken by Quakers themselves have already proven this assumption wrong. The very fact that this conference was convened, for instance, provides a counterexample proving that Quakers can action collectively in ways that foster healing and reconciliation. As another example, we and our allies increasingly hold the work of Paula Palmer and the Boulder Friends Meeting’s Indigenous Peoples Concerns Committee out as a model of how allies can help. And I cannot forget my appreciation for the extent of, and the respectful nature of, the support the Friends Committee on National Legislation provides for many different Native issues, including this one. These are just a handful of examples of Quakers leading the way in healing and progress—there are many, many, more. The potential for major impacts is really only limited by your imaginations. Conclusion As we are all aware, the history of the interactions between the Natives and the newcomers to this continent is not at all pretty in most cases. America’s myth regarding its own creation and expansion is being successfully challenged on many fronts. But this interest in uncovering the real history of our lands,

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including the histories of our cultures that were here before, and the true natures of the interactions between the Natives and the newcomers, is not misguided. I would say the interest is an instinctual yearning for the truth. And the truth is sorely needed because we live in a world that needs our best effort towards healing. In all honesty, despite the clear cases of antagonistic relations in our shared history, perhaps it was more common that well-intentioned people did things that harmed our tribal nations. Regardless of exact causes and attributions of intent and blame, the time has come for healing. Each of you can contribute to this next great cause. Truth-telling is a first step in reconciliation. Uncover those uncomfortable truths, so that we all may finally begin to be free of the resulting hurts. Share what you find, so that America as a whole might heal, so that we all can enlist the support of those who might be sympathetic when they find that the myth of America’s past is actually quite different than we were taught in high school. Then, let’s all move forward. Discover what legacy you have in this story. Regardless of your expertise, your position, your privilege, all of that has roots in the history of those early interactions. Discover the connections you share with the past. Then, act from that understanding to help in the struggle. You, too, will benefit from your efforts to support truth and healing. When you support native issues, from whatever vantage point you are able, you support healing for yourself as well. As an example, the Dakota Access Pipeline doesn’t just affect the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The planned pipeline crosses the two largest riverways of this continent. The threat really runs from Standing Rock all the way to New Orleans. The threat expands beyond that path as well, to the extent that it allows bad precedent in this type of case. The work we do together can have broad ranging positive impacts. Peaceful, respectful ways of dealing with conflict, if supported and allowed to redevelop in our tribal communities, can serve as models for the other court systems. In fact, several state court systems are already in the process of such changes. Regrowth of tribal cultures that the Indian Industrial or Boarding Schools were designed to eliminate will benefit those tribes, but it will also do so much more. Regrowth of tribal traditions and it will also provide examples and access to thousands of years of accumulated wisdom about how to live, sustainably and together, in this part of the world. I congratulate you for convening a conference that provides international leadership in exploring current and historical roles in issues faced by the first peoples of this continent. I appreciate the leadership that so many gathered with us have offered in this regard. Now I encourage each of you to go from

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here more fully aware of, and more fully committed to, the facts that you can make a meaningful difference and that your own best contributions are urgently needed. I urge you to move forward with a goal that we all become healed from the harmful nature of our shared past. This is the vision I invite you to share in—a vision of hope and healing.

Index Abler, Thomas S. 150–151 Abolitionism/anti-slavery, Quakers and, African Americans and 227–228, 230–231 Ackehorn 21 Adams, David Wallace 170 Agricultural mission schools 197–198, 202–204, 206, 208, 211 Albert Smiley 252, 253 Alfred, Taiaiake 174 Allegany Indian Reservation 136, 138, 145, 148, 156, 157 Allegawaho 303 Allouez, Father 72 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions 202 An Act for the Protection and Improvement of the Seneca Indians Residing in the [Allegany] and Cattaraugus Reservations in this State (1845) 145–147 An Act to Benefit the Indians (1849) 153 Andros, Edmund 16, 23–24 Annuities, Treaty 144–145, 147, 149–150 Armistead, Wilson 35 Artis, Kinchen 179, 184–187 Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs 305 Atkins, J.D.C. 278, 279, 287 Atlantic slave trade/enslavement 218, 226, 231, 234–235 Austin, Ann 45 Axtell, James 8 Bailey, James 107 Baltimore Yearly Meeting 136, 138, 197–198, 201–204, 206–208, 211–212, 214, 217, 274, 287, 288, 297 Bark, John 152 Barton, Thomas 85–86 Battey, Thomas 295, 297 Benezet, Anthony 88, 90 Bennett, John 152 Besse, Joseph 34 Big Chief 152 Biörck, Tobias 62, 74

Birch Lake Monthly Meeting (Michigan) 186 Bishop, George 34, 45, 50 Black Hoof 201, 206, 211 Blacksnake, Owen 154 Board of Indian Commissioners 275, 276, 279, 281, 284, 287, 288, 291 Boulder Monthly Meeting 318 Brainerd, John 27 Brotherton 117 Brothertown 236 Brown, Aaron 186–187 Buffalo Creek Reservation 139, 151 Buffalo Creek Treaty (1838) 139–140, 143, 146, 151, 152 Bureau of Indian Education 311 Caddo 297 Calhoun, John C. 203 Calumet 59, 69, 71 ceremonies 54–57, 60, 67–68, 70–72, 74 description of 54, 63–66 Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission 293 Cantico 56–57 Captain Richard Henry Pratt 245–252, 254, 255, 257, 259, 261, 264–265, 268, 269 Carlisle Indian Industrial School 282, 306 Cass, Lewis 210, 214 Catlinite, (red pipestone) 66 Cattaraugus Indian Reservation 136, 138, 139, 143, 145, 147–149, 151, 156 Cayuga 148 Ceremonies, Native religious 68 Cherokee 305 Chickatawbut (Massachusett sachem) 32, 39, 40 Chief Warrior Cornplanter 119, 120, 122, 125 Choctaw 306, 308 Civilization Act 202, 203n20 Coale, Josiah 50 Cock, Lasse 16 Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs Having Charge of the Northern Superintendency 298

322 Compromise Treaty (1842) 136, 138, 139n12, 140, 143 Congdon, Joseph 239 Connessoa 73 Cook, John 147, 152 Cornplanter 152, 295 Crawford, William H. 201, 207 Cromwell, William 238 Cuffe Mary Slocum (Wainer) 219, 231, 233–234, 238 Paul 218, 219, 230–236, 239 Rhoda 234, 239 Cutshamekin (Massachusett sachem) 32, 39–41, 44, 46 Daiutolo, Robert Jr. 9 Dakota Access Pipeline 316, 319 Dawes Act (General Allotment Act of 1887) 278, 283, 284, 286 Dawes, Henry 284, 285 Day, Solomon Jr. 188 Delawares, (Lenape) 54–57 drawing of a manitou 62 family 62 given calumet by Five Nations 62–64 perform calumet ceremony in Philadelphia 68–69 as women 64, 72 Dennis, Julia 150 Densmore, Christopher 9 de Vries, David 20–21 Diddock, Marguerite LaFlesche 290 Dorian, Mary 307, 308 Doxon, Charles 173 Drexel, Katharine 280 Drinker, Henry 102, 105, 109, 110 Drummonds, Samuel 238 Durant, Alexander 107 Dutch 55–57 Dutch West India Company 20–21 Eastman, Charles 301 Eliot, John 32, 39–41 Elkinton, Joseph 137n6, 154, 160, 170–171 Ellicott, Elias 198, 201, 202 Ellicott, James 201

Index Emlen Institute for the benefit of the Children of African and Indian Descent 178, 191–196 Erie Canal 141 Estelle Reel, Superintendent of Indian Schools 269 Evans, Joshua 116 Ewing, William 209–210 Farmers Brother 148 Female Training School 147 Fenton, William N. 141 Field matrons, field matron program 283, 288–290 Fischer, David Hackett 16 Fisher, Linford 8 Fisher, Mary 45 Fisher, Thomas 104 Fletcher, Alice 283, 286 Fletcher, Benjamin 72 Fort Marion Prison, St. Augustine, Florida 245 Fox 309 Fox, George 2, 3, 33, 35, 36, 38, 48 Francis, David 106 Freeman, Pearson 235 Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College 294, 307 Frye, Myra 307 Gaa-na-hoh 150 General, John 152 Genesee Yearly Meeting 300 Geneva Medical College 148 Gerona, Carla 9 Goings, D.C. (Doctor Craig) 177–178 Goings, Joel 178, 194 Goings, Wesley 178, 194 Goode, Michael 9 Gookin, Charles 54, 63, 68–70 Goshen Monthly Meeting (Ohio) 182–185 Governor Blacksnake 147, 150 Grand Council, Iroquois 137 Grant’s Peace Policy 272–274, 276, 277, 281, 282 Grant, Ulysses S. 275, 276, 295, 298–300, 303, 304 Great Law of Peace, Iroquois 142, 144 Great Tree 25

323

Index Green, Albert 302 Greenblanket, John 152 Half-town 121, 125 Halftown, Harrison 153 Halfwhite, Thomas 152 Hallowell, Benjamin 275 Hamm, Thomas 298 Hampton Institute 309 Handsome Lake 143, 145 Harrison, William Henry 205 Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) 25–27, 82, 84, 137, 139, 140 Hawkins, Benjamin 103, 106 Hayes, Rutherford B. 281, 304 Hayt, Ezra 281 Henderson, James 163–164 Hendrick 83 Hennepin, Father Louis 64n35, 71 Hicks, Charles 108 Hicksite 252 Hicksite Separation 138 Hillside Mission Boarding School 303, 305 Hoag, William C. 151, 162 Hobbs, Wilson 300, 301, 307 Holland Land Company 140, 143 Holme, Thomas 25 Holm, Thomas 64–65, 71 Howard Haines Brinton 249–250 Howe, Chester 151 Indian Child Welfare Act 314–315 Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (Wheeler-Howard) 285 Indian Rights Association 273 Indigenous disappearance, trope of (trope of vanishing Indian) 229–231, 239 Iowa Indian Boarding School 307 Iroquois 55–56, 58–59, 61, 68, 71. See also Haudenosaunee Isaac Baird, Presbyterian, Board of Foreign Missions 256 Jacket, John 152 Jackson, Halliday 119–128 Jackson, Hellen Hunt 11, 283 Jackson, John 128–131 Jackson, Rachel Tyson 128–131

Jack Swamp Monthly Meeting (North Carolina) 183–186 James, Duke of York 16, 23–24, 26 Jefferson, Thomas 110 Jemison, George 151, 152, 154 Jemison, Israel 147 Jimerson, William 150, 151, 154 Jimeson, John 152 Jimeson, Zachariah 152 John, Andrew, Jr. 154 John D. Miles 248 Johnson, Polly 150 Johnston, John 207, 213, 215, 216n57 Jones, Isaac 102 Kake 305 Kanza 300, 303 Karalis, H. Lee 308 Kelsey, Rayner 2, 296 Kennedy, Archibald 81 Kennedy, John 147 Kent, Anne 307, 308 Kickapoo 302, 304 Kicking Bird 295 Kimmerer, Robin Wall 310 Kinzua Dam 141, 157 Kiowa 295, 297 Kirk, Rachel 304 Kotzebue 305 Lake Mohonk Conference, Friends of the Indian 252, 253, 279, 283–286 Lakota 301 Le Gros 213, 214 Lenni Lenape 15–29, 81, 83–85 Lewistown, Ohio 179, 190 Lightfoot, Mary B. 301, 307 Lindeström, Peter 65, 66n37, 66n40 Little Joe 152 Little Turtle 99–100, 104, 112, 208 Logan County, Ohio 178–186, 189–196 Logan, James 25, 54, 74, 76 Longfellow, Henry Wordsworth 34 Lossing Benson J. 222 Peter 222–223 Lovelace, Francis 23 Luke, John 151, 152, 154, 155 Luther Standing Bear (Sioux) 251

324 Manitou, (guardian spirits) 55, 57, 60, 62, 66–67 The man-on-the-band-stand (Pratt) 265 Marianne Burgess 265 Markham, William 16–18, 24 Marmon, Joshua 187–189 Marquette, Jacques 64, 67, 71 Marsh, Dawn G. 10 Marstens John 234 Mary Wainer 235 Mary Anna Longstreth 247 Massachusetts 218, 231, 233–235, 237–239 Aquinnah (Gay Head), Martha’s Vineyard 218, 231, 235 Cuttyhunk Island 233 Dartmouth 231–234 New Bedford 218, 233–234, 238–239 Westport 233–235, 239 Massachusetts Bay Colony 30–33, 36–37, 39, 40, 43–49 Massachusett tribe (Wampanoag) 31–32, 39–41, 46–50 Mattahorn 21 McCoy, Isaac 203–204 McGillivray, Alexander 106 McKeen, Hugh B. 197, 198, 214n49, 216 McKenney, Thomas L. 214, 215, 216n57 McLane, Solomon 150, 153–155 Medill, William 148, 149 Menominee 139 Merrell, James 4, 7 Miamis 197–199, 201, 207–211, 214, 216 Milner, Clyde 11 Modoc, Frank 307 Momaday, M. Scott 302 More, Nicholas 24–25 Morgan, Thomas Jefferson 279, 280 Morris, Robert Hunter 81 Moses, Ruth 218, 231–233, 239 Mott Moses 225, 229–230 Stella 223, 225, 229 Mourning war 58, 73–74 Munsees (Delawares) 18, 23 Naaman 22, 29 Nabokov, Peter 302 Nanacussy 24–25

Index Nanticokes 58, 60–62, 71, 73 Narragansett 49 National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition 293, 311, 318 Native American Rights 312–320 Navajo 306 New Government Party 154–156 Newsom, Henry 186–188, 192 Newsom, Nathan 192 New Sweden 62, 64–65 New York 219, 225, 229, 234–236, 238–239 Bridgewater 236–237 Cayuga 235, 239 Dutchess County 225 Oneida 236, 239 Scipio 234, 236 Northampton County, North Carolina 182–186 North Carolina Yearly Meeting 306 Norton, Humphrey 30, 31, 32, 35–43, 45, 47, 49 Norwich, Ontario 218–219, 222–225, 227–229, 231–232, 236–240 Norwich Pioneers 223–225, 227, 229 O’Bail, Solomon 152 Oberly, John H. 278 Ogden Land Company 139, 140, 143 Ohio Yearly Meeting 300 Oil Spring Reservation 145 Old Chiefs’ Party 155, 156 Oneida 295, 296 Onondaga Reservation 137 Orenda 60, 70 Paine, Thomas 88–89 Papunhank 87 Paxton Boys 85–87 Peckham, Marian G. 167 Pemberton, Israel 84, 85, 85n43, 90 Pennsbury 57 Penn’s Treaty 15–17 Penn, William 15–18, 24–26, 28, 29, 57–58, 69, 76 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (pym) 28 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Indian Committee (pymic) 75–76, 90 Philips, John 121–122 Phillips, Martha 150

Index Pickering, Timothy 104 Pierce, Alva 158, 171 Pierce, Edward 158, 171–172 Pierce, Lydia 158–165, 167–172 Pierce, Maris 147–148, 150, 154, 155 Piqua, Ohio (Indian Agency at) 207, 215–216 Polk, James 152, 153 Pontiac’s War 85 Potowatomi 310 Praying Indians 32, 39–41 Price, Hiram 166, 278 Prince, Molly (Mary) 235 Principal Chief Ispahekchar, Muscogee 258 Printz, Johan 21, 26 Puritans 30–39, 41–43, 45, 47–48, 51 Quaker History Collection, Haverford College 294, 296 Quaker mission school, Cherokee of North Carolina 249 Quaker mission school, Pawnee 251 Quakers 55, 58 Renowewan 23 Rhode Island 218 Newport 234 Richardson, John 57 Richardville, Jean Baptiste 197, 208–211, 213, 216 Richter, Daniel K. 4, 6 Risingh, Johan 22 Riverside Indian School 305 Rocky Mountain Yearly Meeting of Evangelical Friends 306 Rumley, Ohio 177–178, 180, 194–196 Sac 309 Salisbury, Neal 7 Samuel M. Janney 252 Samuel Worcester 252 Santee Agency 276, 278, 281, 282, 286, 288, 289 Santee Sioux 302 Sassoonan 54, 68–71 Scarouady 82–84 Schurz, Carl 281, 283 Scollitchy 63, 69, 71 Scott, Felix 166–170 Scott, Jane 150

325 Scoville, Anna Beecher 309, 310 Senator Henry Dawes 248, 253 Senator Thomas Tipton 251 Seneca 58, 60, 66, 136–176, 295–297, 305 Seneca Constitution of 1848 144, 149, 151–153 Seneca Constitution of 1862 148 Seneca Constitution of 1898 152 Seneca Council of Chiefs 142–144, 150–151 Seneca Indian Boarding School 305 Seneca, John 142–144, 150, 154 Seneca Revolution of 1848 144, 149–154 Seneca White 150, 154, 155 Sewel, William 34 Shackamaxon 58 Shankland, Robert 150 Shawnee 58, 60, 197, 199, 201–202, 204–208, 211–212, 214–216, 297, 300, 301, 307 Shawnee Boarding School 300, 301, 307 Shelby, John 190–191 Sierra Leone 234 Silverheels, Joshua 122, 134 Silverman, David 8 Slocum Ebenezer 231, 233n51 Kofi/Cuffe/Cuff 218, 232–233, 239–240 Smiley, Albert K. 284 Smith, Samuel 27 Smith, William 82–83, 85, 85n43 Snow, Betsey 150 Snow, Peter 152 Snow, Thomas 152 South Norwich Historical Society 227 Southwick, Paulina Lossing Howard 222–223 Spencer, Ambrose 140 Spencer, Dorcas 158 Spencer, John 140 Spotted Coat 122 Stewart, John 180, 191 Stockbridge 236 Stockbridge-Munsee 139, 295 Strong, Nathaniel T. 147, 150 Stryker, James 142, 147 Stubbs, Mahlon 300 Stuyvesant, Peter 23 Susan Longstreth 247 Susquehannocks 23

326

Index

Susquehannocks (Conestogas) 55–58, 63, 66, 70–73 Swanendael (Del.), attack on 20–21 Swedes 55–57, 65

Upper Sandusky Reservation 187, 190, 193 Upshall, Nicholas 30, 31, 33–45, 47–50

Tallchief, Alexander 152 Tallchief, John 152 Tamany 25 Tashiowycam 57 Tate, David 106 Taylor, Albert 303 Taylor, Israel 25 Taylor, Walter 141 Taylor, Zachary 154 Tecumseh 206 Teedyuscung 85, 87 Test, Elizabeth 302, 304 Thomas A. Bland 246, 253 Thomas Asylum for Orphan and Destitute Indian Children 136, 155, 156 Thomas, Philip E. 136–157, 198, 201, 202 Tipton, John 197n1, 209n39, 210, 211n42, 214n49 Tlingit 305 Tobacco 59–61, 65, 70 Tonawanda Council of Chiefs 155 Tonawanda Indian Reservation 139 Tonawanda Seneca 137 Tonawanda Treaty (1857) 155 Treaty of Big Tree (1797) 144 Treaty of Canandaigua (1794) 144 Treaty of Greenville 197 Treffry Alice 223 John 237 Trigger, Bruce 6 Trippe, Sarah L. 158 Tunesassa Boarding School 296, 297 Two Guns, Henry 147, 152 Tyson, Elisha 198

Vilas, William Freeman 287

Ulysses S. Grant or Grant Peace Policy 248, 251, 255 United Mission Church 151 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 293

Wainer/Wayner Albert 226 Gardner 218, 234–239 Gardner Jr. 218, 237–240 Jeremiah 226, 237–238 Jerry 226 Lidia 236 Michael Jr. 234–236 Michael Sr. 219, 233–234, 238 Rebecca 237–238 Rhoda Jr. 238 Ruth 236–237 Walking Purchase 25, 29 Wampanoag 218, 231, 233–234, 240 Wampum 61, 63–64, 68, 71 Wapakoneta, Ohio 179, 184, 190, 193, 201–202, 205–206, 211, 216–217, 297 War of 1812 198–199, 201, 202, 208, 210–212, 214, 216 Washington, George 97 Watson, Eva 303, 305 Watson, John 303 Wattles, Augustus 178, 191–196 Wattles, John Otis 192 Webster, Joseph 302 Weddle, Meredith Baldwin 13 Weequehela 29 Welsh, William 273 West, Benjamin, Penn’s Treaty with the Indians 15 Western Emigration Society 200–201 Wheeler, Rachel 8 Whipple, Henry 273 White, Barclay 303, 308 White, Josiah 305 White, Richard 5 White’s Manual Labor Institutes 305–307 Whittier, John Greenleaf 34 Williams, Roger 42, 44, 49 Wilson, Edmund 138 Wilson, Peter 147–148

327

Index Wilson, Thomas 108 Winthrop, John (Governor) 40, 43, 44 Witchcraft 68 Wolfe, James 79 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 158 Women, Native 64–65, 67, 72 Women’s National Indian Association 280, 288 Wood, Susan 296

Woolman, John 80 Wright, Asher 136, 147, 148, 151 Wyandots 201–202, 207 Young Chief 147 Young King 151 Zane, Isaac 181–182 Zitkala-Sa 301, 307