Did the British try to Spread Smallpox to Indians Using Infected Blankets?

[caption id="attachment_1019" align="aligncenter" width="510"] Joshua Reynolds was the artist for this 1766 painting of Jeffery Amherst. Amherst is the villain in this blogpost.[/caption]

There's a piece of history that gets talked about online sometimes and - the way things normally happen on the internet - claims are made but evidence is not given to back up those claims.

In this blogpost I'm going to deal with the question of whether or not the British intentionally spread smallpox to Native Americans with infected blankets.

The shortest and most "fair" answer to that question - as it often is - is that we don't know for sure.

We do know for sure, however, that spreading smallpox was discussed among the highest officers in the British army. More about that later in this post.

But the question of whether they really tried to pull off such a genocidal scheme is different from discussing it as a possibility.

In one chapter of The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814, Matthew C. Ward deals with our question. According to Ward

There is little direct evidence that the British army ever consciously used "germ warfare." In the eighteenth century, the process of disease transmission remained a mystery and while the Fort Pitt garrison may have redistributed a few blankets from the smallpox hospital... most of the Indian headmen who would have accepted such gifts would have been pro-British, the group whom Amherst and other commanders would not have wanted to undermine (page 64).

In Ward's chapter, "The Microbes of War: The British Army and Epidemic Disease among the Ohio Indians, 1758-1765," he also points out how some of the logistics of primitive germ warfare make it unlikely that the idea was "successfully" carried out - at least given the context of when and where it was proposed.

The smallpox virus Variola Major can, under certain conditions, exist in a dried state. However, it prefers cool and dry conditions, hardly those of mid-summer in the Ohio Valley. Although the chances of its long-term survival are slight, its transmission via infected blankets is thus at least potentially feasible.

So there may have actually been an atttempt to distribute infected blankets at one point and it is even possible that Indians contracted smallpox and even died from blankets distributed by the British, but possible is the keyword. The claim cannot be made with any degree of certainty that the British attempted or managed to kill Indians by distributing blankets that were infected with smallpox.

Nevertheless, Jeffery Amherst, the Commander in Chief of the British forces in North America, did propose the genocidal, eighteenth century germ warfare scheme that we've been discussing here. And Ward quotes two letters written by Amherst to Colonel Henry Bouquet, who was stationed in the Ohio Valley, where Pontiac's War (sometimes known as "Pontiac's Rebellion") had broken out. Amherst wrote the first letter in July of 1763.

[C]ould it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Strategem in our power to Reduce them.

The second letter was written only a week later.

You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians, by means of Blankets, as well as to Try every other Method, that can Serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race (both of these quotes are on page 64).

Historians are generally in agreement that more Indians died from diseases imported from Europe than from the wars that went on during the same period of time. Although Matthew Ward was able to write a whole chapter about the interplay between germs and the British military in the Sixty Years' War, the idea of killing Indians with infected blankets is only discussed in the first two pages of the chapter. Amherst's statements as quoted above, are very remarkable in their own right, even if it is unlikely that anybody followed through with his proposal.

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A Map of the Stockbridge Mohicans' "Trail of Tears"

[caption id="attachment_999" align="aligncenter" width="604"] This map outlines the migrations of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. Click on the image to enlarge it.[/caption]

 

Above is my best visual representation of the Stockbridge Mohicans' "Trail of Tears," and the only reason that I put that in quotation marks is because the phrase has long been associated with removals of the southeastern Native nations. If you've read my book, Proud and Determined, you already know that the people now known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians endured many, many years of hard times. And their migrations were an essential part of those hard times.

Many of the migrations don't have an exact date, instead, they happened over a range of years. Below is a summary of the Trail of Tears of the Stockbridge Mohicans:

 

The tribe started leaving Massachusetts in 1785 and that move was two-thirds complete by 1787. They made a treaty with the Menominees and Ho-Chunk (sometimes known as the Winnebago Indians) in 1821 and another one in 1822 (which will be the subject of an upcoming blogpost). One band, led by John Metoxen, left New Stockbridge, New York in 1818, but, by the time they reached their destination, Indiana's White River, they were told that the land had been sold by the Delaware, Miami and other tribes.

Although the Metoxen band did their best to establish farms on the White River for about four years, they could not stay and in 1822 they headed up to Detroit. There they met up with about twenty of their tribesmen who had taken a steamship, the Walk-in-the-Water, from Buffalo. This larger band landed in Green Bay and made their way up the Fox River, settling Statesburg, which is now the south part of Kaukauna, Wisconsin. The long migration had really only started in 1822. Several bands made their own separate moves from New Stockbridge, New York to Statesburg between 1822 and 1829.

The treaties that were made in 1821 and 1822 were not well-thought-out and, understandably, the Menominee Indians put up a protest against them. For quite a few years the United States tried to get the Menominees and the New York Indians to make some kind of agreement or compromise regarding the two sloppily created treaties. The end result was that the Stockbridges had to move again. Their next home was on the east shore of Lake Winnebago, not particularly far south of Statesburg.

The move from Statesburg to their next settlement, known as Stockbridge, Wisconsin was made in 1834 and 1835. A number of sources will confirm this, the one that I have to share with you now is from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, or ABCFM, the ABCFM received very detailed reports from Rev. Cutting Marsh, several times a year (we get the ABCFM's report here via Roger Nichols' biography of Rev. Cutting Marsh).



 

It goes without saying that each time Indians were told that they would have to move it was a disincentive for clearing land for farming. Unfortunately, in this brief summary, there is little space to go into any detail other than the "wheres" and "whens" of each move.

Something I intentionally left out of the map was the 1839 departure of less than one hundred Indians from Stockbridge, Wisconsin to what is now Kansas. This "Emmigrant Party," was made up of members of the Hendrick family, the Konkapot family and the Brotherton Delawares, a group of Natives who sold their reservation in New Jersey and moved to New Stockbridge, New York in 1802 (or, possibly 1803).

Two townships were purchased from the Menominees and those two twonships became the Stockbridge Mohicans' reservation per an 1856 treaty. The Citizen Party began moving to the Shawano County Reservation within months of having thedetails worked out. On the other hand, many of the Indian Party Stockbridges protested the tereaty of 1856, some of them not moving until 1860. In fact, given that the soil of the new reservation was poor for farming, many Indians would be "absentees" from the rez for many years.

Arguably, the tribe still had more moving to do. But, for the sake of simplicity, I'll just say that the current reservation of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians exists on the same two townships in Shawano County that the Citizen Party started moving to in 1856.

My thanks to Bart Putzer from Bart Putzer Design, for creating the graphics for the map in this post.

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April 17, 2014 - Note: I want to acknowledge here that the Stockbridge-Munsee Historical Committee has their own map - which I have seen but didn't use as a source. (They also used the title "....Trail of Tears.") If their map shows the same places, routes and dates (and I really don't know if it does or not), it only means that my research agrees with theirs.

Why Weren't the Perpetrators of the Gnadenhutten Massacre Brought to Justice?

If you've been following this series of posts, you already know that the Gnadenhutten Massacre was a horrible and shameful example of frontier violence during the American Revolution (which also makes it part of the Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes). The massacre itself was described in the post just prior to this one.

Those of you who have read my book, Proud and Determined, know that The Stockbridge Mohicans were briefly suspected of arson, kidnapping and murder by their white neighbors in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Those suspicions were short-lived, because of the larger picture: a state of war between the British and the French with the Stockbridge Indians ready to fight for the British. (Those acts of arson, kidnapping, and murder, committed by French-allied Indians, were what brought the French and Indian War to Stockbridge, Massachusetts.)

The Moravian Indians in the Ohio River Valley, however, were in a much different situation. They were associating themselves with German-speaking missionaries. The Moravian missionaries - aside perhaps, from the fact that they were white - really had no standing in American society (and no standing in British society either). The Moravian committment to peace and justice meant on the one hand that the mission communities themselves weren't going to exploit their Native converts. But on the other hand, the Moravian Indians were - in a lot of ways - a lot more vulnerable to outside forces compared with Indians like the Stockbridges who had managed to align themselves with the white American powers-that-be.

The Moravian committment to peace is something that their white farmer neighbors simply didn't understand. In their view - according to Leonard Sadosky (201) - it was impossible for Indians to be neutral in war.

And you probably remember from my last post that that was part of the context in which the Gnadenhutten Massacre occurred.

You'll also remember from earlier posts that Sadosky divides frontier society into three groups: The largest group was made up of common white farmers and the Pennsylvania militia that were guilty of killing ninety-six Christian Indians at Gnadenhutten came from this largest group.

But the smallest group in number, the gentry, or upper class whites, held positions of power and they were the ones who should have brought the perpetrators to justice. Why didn't that happen?

Sadosky's chapter ("Rethinking the Gnadenhutten Massacre") in the book The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, has been very difficult for me to "get my head around" and I think I know why. His topic is an event of great cruelty and racism - but he manages to go beyond the cruelty and racism of the Gnadenhutten Massacre to see more.

According to Sadosky (page 202), "Indian trade, alliance, and coexistence...formed the centerpiece of the Continental commanders' [frontier] strategy" at Fort Pitt. And this rubbed the common white farmers the wrong way. Going back as far as 1779, Sadosky analyses Colonel Daniel Brodhead's roughly two years as commander of Fort Pitt, which ended with the common farmers pressuring General George Washington to relinquish his position.  By the end of 1781, Brigadier General William Irvine was the new commandant at Fort Pitt. When Irvine left to consult with Congress, "the rumble of mutiny and rebellion was heard from inside the walls of Fort Pitt"(197). The enlisted men (the common white farmers) were rebelling against the upper class white officer corps.

When General Irvine returned, he struggled to get everybody onto the same page. His approach to - or avoidance of - the Gnadenhutten Massacre is explained by Sadosky:

Irvine was determined to not become a victim of political pratfalls that had handicapped, and in some cases almost killed, his predecessors. Fortunately for the historian, on several occassions Irvine revealed his inner thoughts... Just weeks after he returned...and learned of the violence...he observed that "The general and common opinion of the people of this country is that all Continental officers are too fond of Indians"(204).

General Irvine wanted to keep his job - and save his skin. That serves as enough of an explanation as to why he kept quiet about the massacre.

In Sadosky's last paragraph he writes that an

adversarial and hierarchichal social structure combined with a potent public policy debate [produced] a combustible situation. Commandants Daniel Brodhead and William Irvine were patrician, autocratic outsiders in a world that valued independence, liberty, and patriarchal authority. Given the anti-aristocratic nature of the American Revolution, the commandants found themselves in a position that offered enormous potential to offend the local populace. The militiamen of Washington County wanted a change in how the Continental commanders made use of the enormous public powers granted them. Violence against the Continental army's Native wards, and threats against its officers were a brutal, but effective way to achieve these ends. Daniel Brodhead's inability to heed the signs of popular discontent resulted in his removal from office and set into motion a series of events culminating in massacre and rebellion.

I've been struggling with Sadosky's nineteen-page chapter for a few weeks now and I'm glad to be done with it. For almost the entire time, I was not able to get past the brutality and racism of the massacre itself to understand what Sadosky was able to add to it with his broader analysis. But that is what sets his work apart from the others.

The final post in this series will be about at least one long-term effect of the shameful day in Gnadenhutten.

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Leonard Sadosky Recounts the Gnadenhutten Massacre

[caption id="attachment_953" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] This is an artist's conception of the Gnadenhutten Massacre. The white militiamen did use hatchets to scalp their victims. However, the killing itself is believed to have been done with a cooper's mallet.[/caption]

My previous post ended with a "To be Continued..."

We were at the point where David Williamson again brought together a militia of white farmers. The horrible massacre itself was still a few weeks away.

I imagine there is no substitute for actually reading Leonard Sadosky's chapter: "Rethinking the Gnadenhutten Massacre: The Contest for Power in the Public World of the Revolutionary Pennsylvania Frontier." (It is found in the book The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814.) Consider this a first look at Sadosky's work.

Again - my disclaimer - the Gnadenhutten Massacre still was what it was. It cannot be explained away. It was certainly what we now would call a crime of war. [Sadosky appropriately cited the sources he used with endnotes which I have not reproduced here.]

 

As you may remember from my previous post, many of the Moravian Indians - and the two missionaries, Zeisberger and Heckewelder - had been taken away from their villages by British-allied Indians in the fall of 1781. Most of them were allowed to return to gather corn in February, 1782. While they were busy in the fields, the Indians of Gnadenhutten were warned by a party of warriors "that they would probably be pursued"(198). Sadosky adds

Some villagers were worried, but the majority reasoned that since the Americans knew they were Christians, and since they needed to finish gathering their corn, they would return to Sandusky only when the enitre harvest was gathered. It was a fatal miscalculation.

Then he goes on to describe the events of that shameful day, March 7, 1782. As Williamson's roughly two-hundred men came near Gnadenhutten, they came upon a young Delaware man and immediately one of the Pennsylvania rifles fired, injuring the man in the arm and knocking him to the ground. Sadosky continues

As the militia came upon him he begged for his life, saying he was Joseph Shebosh, the son of a white Moravian missionary. Another gunshot echoed through the frozen woodland, and Shebosh was dead (198).

And then he was scalped.

The militia rode on into the town where they managed to appear non-threatening to the peaceful Indians, warned them of possible danger, talked about taking them to Fort Pitt for their own safety and then they had the Indians hand over whatever weapons they had.

According to Sadosky, the white farmers' militia found it "odd" that the

Delawares were using axes, pewter bowls, pewter spoons, teakettles, and cups. They observed also that their horses were branded and that other articles were stamped with letters. Surely, they reasoned, these goods were evidence that these Indians had engaged in the plunder of Washington County (PA), or at least were friendly with those who had. Williamson and his men accused the Delawares of theft and murder (199).

Accusers often jump to conclusions when making allegations.

According to Sadosky, "Accounts vary as to what transpired next." But - although the particulars vary from one source to another - together all the sources "present a fairly coherent picture of Gnadenhutten's final day," which included "violent actions that were as cold and calculated as they were brutal"(199).

Wiliamson convened a war council in which about two dozen militiamen advocated the sparing of the Indians' lives. But the majority ruled. The militia informed the men, women and children of Gnadenhutten that they were going to be put to death. The Indians first protested and then resigned themselves to their fate. On page 200, Sadosky quotes Heckewelder who was still being kept prisoner at Sandusky (Heckewelder's own source will be revealed later in this post).

They kneeled down, offering fervent prayers to God their Savior - and kissing one another, under a flood of tears, fully resigned to his will, they sang praises unto him, in joyful hope, that they would soon be relieved from all pains, and join their redeemer in everlasting bliss.

The next paragraph is Sadosky's description of the massacre itself:

Those militiamen who did not wish to participate in the killing left the village. But plenty of Pennsylvanians and Virginians remained to enact the sentance of death. Still singing, still crying, the male Moravians were separated from the women and children, and led to two separate houses. Then, one militiaman seized the mallet of Gnadenhutten's cooper from one of the houses and began striking the men on the head with it one by one. After the first man had killed fourteen, he called for another to take his place. All the Indians were struck, then scalped. Finally the militiamen set the houses afire. Amazingly, two young boys managed to survive the slaughter - one by hiding silently in a cellar, the other by feigning death amidst the pile of corpses in one of the "slaughter-houses." They both escaped, made their way to Sandusky, and their testimony became the basis for the accounts of Moravian historians George Loskiel and John Heckewelder (200).

 

This series on the Gnadenhutten Massacre will continue.
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Gnadenhutten and Fort Pitt on the Frontier of the American Revolution

[caption id="attachment_935" align="aligncenter" width="300"] "Gnadenhutten" is German for "Huts of Grace."[/caption]

A lot of people won't be able to get past the fact that ninety-six Christian Indians - including women and children - were killed at Gnadenhutten Ohio. I myself didn't want to write another post about it. What good can come out of it, I was thinking. And what point is there to give the massacre context. It still was what it was, right?

If you remember one thing about Gnadenhutten, it should, of course, be the massacre itself and it goes without saying that it was a shameful, horrible atrocity.

The concepts of "crimes against humanity" and crimes of war" had not been conceived yet back in 1782. But they describe what happened at Gnadenhutten, Ohio.

While the context surrounding the Gnadenhutten Massacre will not explain it away, it would be too easy for me to just tell myself that with all the emotion surrounding the Gnadenhutten Massacre, I should just call it a war crime and then move on to another topic. No. My subject in Algonkian Church History is Christian Indians and if I'm going to give Gnadenhutten its fair weight, then I need to go into a lot more detail.

So here goes. Here are some relevant facts or context, or whatever:

According to historian Leonard Sadosky, the goings-on at Fort Pitt are an important element in knowing more about the Gnadenhutten Massacre. In his chapter "Rethinking the Gnadenhutten Massacre," Sadosky goes into a lot of detail about Gnadenhutten's context.

Sadosky tells us that Fort Pitt was run by white American oligarchs, or the upper-class. At that time, white America could be divided into the upper class (or gentry) and the common farmers. Furthermore, Sadosky notes, one of the themes of the American Revolution itself was of the common white man trying to liberate himself from the upper class. On the frontier back then (as Sadosky tells it), there were a lot of common whites, less Indians, and the smallest group of all were the white oligarchs, the gentry, or upper class. The upper class whites understood the need for diplomacy with the Indians. But the farmers had their own needs and didn't place much value on the importance of getting along with the Indians. The militia responsible for the Gnadenhutten massacre was made up of lower class white farmers.

Let's try to follow Sadosky's line of thought:

He says there was a "popular antipathy toward commerce and diplomacy with Indians [that] became manifest at several points during the years leading up to the Gnadenhutten Massacre"(193).

Sadosky understands the significance of Gnadenhutten being on the frontier during wartime:

War for American Independence placed the Moravian villages in a precarious poisition. they found themselves almost directly between the Anglo-American faming communities of western Pennsylvania, and the numerous British-allied Native villages of the Great Lakes Basin. Caught in the middle of this geopolitical vortex, the Moravian Delawares attempted to placate both sides in order to maintain their neutrality (196-197).

And how did the Moravian villages placate both sides"? According to Sadosky

The Moravian towns often provided a way station for British-allied Indians raiding the Pennsylvania farms, while Moravian leaders, such as the Reverend John Heckewelder and the Reverend David Zeisberger, provided intelligence to the Continental commanders at Fort Pitt (197).

Next comes some action:

British-allied Indians had taken the Moravian missionaries and many of the Indians as prisoners in 1781.

White farmer David Williamson gathered up a militia and toured the Moravian villages, in November, 1781, but, of course few people were around, because they were being help by the British-allied Indians.

Williamson's militia captured the few Indians they found and took them to Fort Pitt.

As soon as the commandant at Fort Pitt learned they were from the Christian communities, he released the prisoners that Williamson's militia had rounded up.

Per Sadosky (197), "The fact that the Indians' release was soon followed by attacks against farms on the western edge of Washington County raised the ire of many of the County's residents."

By early February of 1782, the enlisted men at Fort Pitt were threatening mutiny, stemming from a "lack of pay and no provision for clothing"(197). And

At nearly the same time, a raiding party from Sandusky, probably of Wyandots and Mingoes, entered the western townships of Washington County. They attacked and raided several blockhouses, killing some Pennsylvanians and taking others prisoner. Ostensibly desiring to recover the prisoners, the men of Washington County mustered into a militia unit in the latter part of February in order to pursue the Indians (198).

 

To be continued.....

 

Sadosky's chapter is part of the book The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814

Citation:

Skaggs, David Curtis, and Larry L. Nelson. The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.

 

 
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The Stockbridge Bible, Gift of the Rev. Francis Ayscough

Francis Ayscough with the Prince of Wales (later King George III) and Edward Augustus, Duke of York and Albany, by Richard Wilson (died 1782), given to the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1900.

The gift of the Rev. D. Francis Ayscough, to the Indian Congregation at Housatonnic in New England. MDCCXLV

Those are the gold-embossed letters on the cover of both volumes of the Stockbridge Bible. ("MDCCXLV," by the way, is "1745" in Roman numerals.)

It has already been a few years since I wrote a series of blogposts on the Stockbridge Bible, but a few days ago my own "discovery" of the Stockbridge Bible was written up in the Oshkosh Northwestern. So more people are finding out about the Stockbridge Bible for the fist time. Yesterday one of my co-workers asked me about how the Stockbridge Mohicans got their special two-volume Bible.

Before I answer that question here, I want to emphasize that the edition the tribe was given is "generally acknowledged as the most magnificent Bible printed in England." And we can count that as one of several reasons why the Stockbridge Bible is a big deal. But another reason why it has been a big deal is where it came from. That is the story I'm going to re-tell in the remainder of this post.

My source is a book that was printed in 1753. The title is so long that it is usually shortened to "Historical Memoirs," or it may be shortened to "Historical Memoirs Relating to the Housatunnuk Indians." It is available via the Internet Archive (see pages 128 to 132).

 

When our story begins, the elder John Sergeant was the Stockbridge Mohicans' missionary. Timothy Woodbridge was the teacher for an integrated school. But plans were being made for boarding schools for the children of neighboring tribes. An Isaac Hollis of London offered to bankroll the funds for a boys' boarding school and John Sergeant wrote up some kind of a formal open letter, a proposal or "scheme" for raising money to support a similar boarding school for girls.

John Sergeant was fortunate that his letter somehow reached Thomas Coram, a retired sea captain, who had established the world's first incorporated charity, a hospital for orphans. Coram had connections and knew how to raise money.

In Corum's own words he was "charm'd" (page 129) by John Sergeant's idea of a boarding school for girls and he had a book bound, a "subscription book,"  in which his wealthy contacts would essentially sign-up as contributors or subscribers. Coram got a number of wealthy Brits interested, they told him they wanted to contribute, but wanted somebody else to sign his or her name first.

So Captain Coram sought a donation from the Prince of Wales.

Coram was familiar with the protocol of asking the prince for money.  He wrote up a petition and sent it - along with the subscription book - to Colonel John Shute, the Privy Purse to his Royal Highness, who happened to be one of his regular contacts.  However, since John Shute was away from London, he sent Coram's petition and subscription book to Rev. Francis Ayscough, the Clerk of the Closet, essentially a personal chaplain and tutor to the prince.

Ayscough brought the petition and suscription book to Frederick, the Prince of Wales, who put his name at the head of the subscription book, giving twenty guineas to the Stockbridge boarding school project. Meanwhile, Rev. Ayscough

also let him know that he himself designed to make a present of a Bible to the congregation at Stockbridge, which he soon after did; one of the largest sort, finely gilt, bound up in three Vol., large Folio, which now adorns the pulpit at Stockbridge and is made use of for the benefit of the congregation every Lord s Day (page 131).

If anything about this is confusing to you, it might be that there were "three Vol.," not two volumes. At one point there actually were three volumes, the third being the apocraphal books of the Bible which the Puritans in America had no use for. The point at which the three volumes became two volumes can only be speculated on.

However that may be, the two volume Stockbridge Bible meant a lot to the "Indian congregation" over the years. Interpretated strictly, that first congregation was taken over by whites well before the tribe left Massachusetts. Nevertheless, the Stockbridge Bible was a big deal for a long, long time.

 

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How Does Black Hoof Compare with Other Chiefs?

[caption id="attachment_897" align="alignnone" width="233"] Painting of Black Hoof by Hal Sherman, 2010.[/caption]

We Americans have named towns, libraries, and a brand of small engines after Tecumseh, the Shawnee war chief. An essential part of Tecumseh's popular appeal, of course, is that he fits into the "noble savage" stereotype. He was a traditionalist. And there is something appealing about that to both Indians and non-Indians in today's modern world.

But Tecumseh was only one of many Native leaders that had integrity. For example, Captain Hendrick Aupaumut of the Stockbridge Mohicans had integrity. He wanted to keep his people away from alcohol, and wanted them to learn to read and farm. To Captain Hendrick, "civilization" was the way to bring his people out of bad times. The fact that he turned to alcohol late in life was really not due to any weakness of his own, but rather to his discouragement over not being given a fair chance to establish an all-Indian territory at Indiana's White River - despite his loyalty to the United States.

The Miami war chief Little Turtle is another relatively unsung hero of roughly the same times and places as Tecumseh and Captain Hendrick. A brilliant military tactician, Little Turtle routed both the French and the United States on the battlefield. When he became an advocate for peace with the United States, it was a practical judgement based first on an improved US fighting force and later on an appreciation of the whites "civilization" and the possibility that the Miamis could succeed as farmers.

 

The two most well-known Shawnees are the war chief Tecumseh and his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, known often simply as "the Shawnee Prophet." The Shawnee brothers' opposition to the United States in the War of 1812 certainly gives them an important place in American History and nobody can take that away.

On the other hand, in a book chapter called "Forgotten Allies: The Loyal Shawnees and the War of 1812," R. David Edmunds points out that the majority of the Shawnees supported the United States.

Understandably, of course, many Shawnees tried to remain neutral as long as they could. Also, by 1800 most of the Shawnees were already west of the Mississippi (here, of course, we're only concerned with the Shawnees that remained in the Great Lakes region).

Edmunds points out that in the October 1813 Battle of the Thames, "more Shawnee warriors served in [William Henry] Harrison's army than fought with Tecumseh" (338).*

Why? well, we need to back up several years. By 1795 the Shawnees had been at war for over twenty years and many of them were sick and tired of fighting. As a part of what we might call the Miami confederacy, the Shawnees were on the losing side at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. This loss led to the 1795 Treaty of Greenville in which most of Ohio was ceded to the United States.

While the treaty of Greenville was distasteful to Tecumseh and other more militant or traditional Shawnees,  the terms of that same treaty were welcomed by those who were ready to stop fighting. Once a feared warrior, but now in his fifties, Black Hoof was the chief that the peace-oriented Shawnees followed. According to Edmunds

[Black Hoof] subscribed to the government's acculturation programs. In response, federal Indian agents recognized him as the spokesperson for the Shawnees, and channeled their annuities through his village.... In the decade following the Treaty of Greenville, he visited Baltimore and Washington upon several occasions, repeatedly soliciting agricultural assistance both from federal officials, and from the Society of Friends.... By June, 1808, Black Hoof's people had split rail fences, erected log cabins, and planted over 500 acres with traditional crops such as corn, beans and squash and pumpkins, but they also planted turnips, cabbage, and potatoes. In addition, they nurtured several small orchards of apples and had acquired a herd of hogs, three cattle, and two yokes of oxen.... Construction was begun on both a sawmill and a gristmill and...travelers... described the Shawnees' well-groomed fields and 'comfortable houses of hewn logs with chimneys.' Others commented upon the Shawnees' sobriety ("a matter of surprise to those who are acquainted with Indians"), and, in the fall of 1808, the War Department received a petition from white citizens near Dayton who praised the Shawnees and commented that "We find them sober and civil... and look upon them as a watchful safeguard to our habitations (339-340).*

Maybe those things are not as romantic as the things that Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were up to during that same time, but maybe chiefs like Black Hoof should also be admired - or at least respected - for their integrity and leadership.

 

*Source:

Edmunds' chapter (Forgotten Allies: The Loyal Shawnees and the War of 1812) is on pages 337-341 in

Skaggs, David Curtis, and Larry L. Nelson. The Sixty Years' War for the Great
Lakes, 1754-1814. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.



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