Forgotten Army Vets, Female Camp Followers, the Murder at Vincennes & the Diplomacy of Mirrors
"Like many of his companions in arms, after encountering the dangers and enduring the hardships of a protracted war, Col. Spencer found himself at its close reduced from affluence to comparative poverty; but with them too he enjoyed the proud satisfaction of having aided in achieving that independence which laid the foundation of our national greatness and prosperity, and the hope of perpetuating to his children's children the blessings of civil and religious liberty" (Indian Captivity: A True Narrative of the Capture of the Rev. O. M. Spencer, 6).
Spencer arrives with his parents at Columbia in December, 1790 (near present-day Cincinnati), located on a plain "stretching along the Ohio from the Crawfish [Creek] to the mouth, and for three miles up the Little Miami, and [...] divided into farms, highly cultivated;" which was "expected to become a large city, the great capital of the west" (13).
Preceding St. Clair's expedition was General Scott's, who was from Kentucky; his expedition, in May, 1791, was against the Indians on the Wabash and "had little effect on the tribes north of us, whose boldness and daring remained unchecked" (17).
Even before Scott's expedition against the Indians on the Wabash (to give a greater perspective) was an attack by the Wabash villagers on the Americans who had settled along the river seven miles from Vincennes in the spring of 1786 (White, 421). Vincennes was the place that embodied the social, ethnic, and political diversity of the pays d'en haut in the 1780s; it had 300 houses made of wooden frame and covered with bark, a mixture of Algonquian and French styles (422). The tribes who lived near the Wabash and its tributaries were in alliance with the French: Kickapoos, Mascoutens, Piankashaws, Weas, Delawares, Shawnees, and Miamis. Pacane was a leading alliance chief of the Miamis during the 1780s and 1790s. The Americans were not integrated or amalgamated within the alliance between the Algonquians and the French. They were interlopers that did not abide by the "middle ground" political system described by White that was relatively egalitarian insofar as no one group raised "overwhelming force against the others" (423). Some of the Americans were, in fact, squatters, according to White. By 1786 the French and the Indians at Vincennes had been joined by these 70 American families that had claimed lands around the posts. "Some of these claims derived from the Virginia occupation of the region during the [Revolutionary?] war; some of the claims were mere squatters' rights" (422). George Rogers Clark conquered Vincennes in 1778. But by 1788 Clark's "political and military accomplishments had melted away." The Indians joined the British and the French drifted into neutrality (423). In Vincennes there was no state authority, only a council of magistrates under a governor of sorts.
According to White, it was largely because of liquor that violence broke out between the Americans and the Indians. Le Gras, who was the governor of Vincennes at the time (appointed by Virginia's representative to the Ohio Valley, John Todd, before the latter left), had no "military authority to sustain him" (424). The French magistrates banned the trade of liquor to the Indians but they could not suppress it (423). The Indian chiefs along the Wabash in 1786 were not able or willing to act. "In 1787 Harmar still found the Wabash Indians 'amazing fond' of drinking" (424). Secondly, the Indians were without a father, an onontio (grandfather), "to provide them with the necessary gifts" with which to negotiate and the Americans had no equivalent chiefs with whom to negotiate (424).
(It should be noted that the father relationship (onontio) between the French and the Algonquians was not one of subservience to the French or subjugation of the Indians by the French as one may assume on the face of it; there is not the implication that the father is like the Old Testament God. In my opinion, the father figure to the Indian was more like a rich benevolent old uncle fond of his nieces and nephews. The Americans never played this role. In fact, we shall see later that the American government took the role of a vengeful God while at the same time addressing the Indians as brothers! What a way of putting a mind-fuck on a people.)
Furthermore, Indian chiefs did not arbitrate to "cover the dead" any more, a custom whereby an exchange had to be made to compensate for a death due to killing or murder, a life for a life. How could they arbitrate when they had to deal with hair-trigger individuals like Daniel Sullivan, who Le Gras described as "'very dangerous . . . and pernicious to the public peace'" (the American, mean asshole hillbilly type of acting without latitude--the shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude) (424)?
The chiefs finally acted after some Americans scalped an Indian in Vincennes. (The Americans "scalped their victim and dragged his dead body 'like a pig at the tail of a horse'" (425).) The murder had "threatened to turn the blood feud to war" (425). Therefore, Le Gras "ordered all Americans without passports to leave Vincennes" (425).
Spencer alludes to Gen. St. Clair's expedition of November 3, 1791 to the Miami towns on the Wabash River, whose towns included the French town of Vincennes, where a fort had been established in 1731 (White, 162):
"Of about fifteen hundred men who engaged in battle on the fatal morning [Nov. 4], six hundred and thirty, including thirty-seven officers, were killed; and two hundred and forty-four, including thirty officers, were wounded. Beside these, a number of pack-horsemen, wagoners [sic], and others attached to the army, were killed; and of nearly two hundred women, principally its followers, three only escaped; about fifty were killed, and the residue [remainder] were made prisoners" (Indian Captivity, 25).
The Historical Atlas of Native Americans, by Dr. Ian Barnes, makes no mention of the female followers of the army (unless it is implied that camp followers were always women) and has slightly different figures than Spencer's account of the same battle:
"On November 4, Little Turtle and Blue Jacket led a force of warriors from fourteen tribes against the Americans. The latter were crushed, with 623 killed, 258 wounded, and 197 camp followers sca1786lped" (230).
Who was St. Clair? To answer this question, let's go back to 1787, a few years before the murder at Vincennes:
- July: Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance "to govern the lands north of the Ohio and dispatched Arthur Saint Clair as governor" (416, White). The government's armed strength along the Ohio River averaged about 350 men, but they were not funded by the government.
The treaty situation between Congress and the Indians:
- 1784: with the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix
- 1785: at Fort McIntosh
- 1786: at the mouth of the Great Miami
- 1788: the Continental Congress was dissolved
- 1789: the federal government was established
- 1786 - 1788: large influx of immigrants into Northwest Territory passing on the Ohio (418). They passed Ft. Harmar on the Ohio, present-day Marietta, in eastern Ohio on their way down the Ohio. "These settlers were nominally under the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania and Virginia, but the Kentucky settlements were well on their way to becoming a separate state" (418). Many of them squatted "on lands claimed by both the U.S. government and the Indians. They raided Indian Territory both independently and as Kentucky militia" (418).
(Note the irony of this last quotation from White quoting St. Clair in light of the oft quoted adage of those Americans who purportedly don't love their country and that epitomizes patriotism: "Love it, or leave it.")
These settlers were considered vagabonds by Harmar (419), lawless in other words. St Clair's idea was to accommodate them rather than "burning them out," which "stirred their resentment without keeping them away" (419). "To pacify them and hold them for the republic, St. Clair wanted to purchase the Illinois country from the Algonquians and dispose of it in small tracts" (419).
- 1783 - 1790: "[...] the Indians killed, wounded, or enslaved 1,500 people" (228, Native American Atlas)
NOTE: Don't we know, even today, these "backcountry fighters" oh so/all too well--the likes of whom stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Major John F. Hamtramck was the commander of the federal garrison at Vincennes (the quondam French fort).
The Algonquians did not accept the "American claims to their territory by right of conquest" (420). Thus a "federal war" was precipitated and "proceeded alongside the village wars of the border "so to establish its authority "over white as well as red 'savages'" (420). Furthermore, the government's aim was not only to subjugate but to drive "the British troops at Detroit and Michilimackinac from American soil" (420). The interesting point White makes is that "war [...] obscured the tangled politics and social relations that put, or failed to put, soldiers and warriors in the field" (420). The western confederation of Indians was the "central feature of this complicated world" (420-21). "[T]he confederation did not exist except in its relation to outsiders. The confederation ruled no villages; its leaders could not compel allegiance" (421). (This is attributable to the whole question of what constituted a chief and the fact that among the Indians there were chiefs and there were war chiefs, the two not necessarily coinciding. Furthermore, a chief recognized by the French or British was not necessarily recognized as such by the Indians themselves.)
According to Spencer, St. Clair's army was defeated in early November, 1791. The broken army reached Cincinnati on November 8. Blue Jacket and Little Turtle had led the Indians. Despite St. Clair's defeat, Spencer says that Forts Hamilton, St. Clair, and Jefferson provided "great protection (Spencer, 27) and that Ft. Washington provided protection for Cincinnati as well (27).
Note: Tanner in his Narrative does not allude to St. Clair's defeat at all. Tanner would have been ten or eleven years old at the time, since he was captured at the age of nine in 1789.
Spencer refers to Cincinnati as the "seventh city" in the US. He saw it on Feb. 22, 1791, and it had 40 log cabins and "not exceeding two hundred and fifty inhabitants" (27).
(Tanner's Narrative has no description, at least right after he was captured, of how his parents reacted to his capture, which is really indicative of a remark Tanner makes at the beginning of his narrative--he yearned to escape to the Indians, especially after the caning his father gave him for skipping school, which yearning for adventure is very Huck Finnian.)
Spencer's father defers to better judgement and did not have troops sent to pursue his son's captors. He felt the Indians would kill his son, so he dissuaded his neighbors from pursuing them. The young Spencer was captured on July 4, 1792, when he was eleven years old. (Tanner gives no date of his capture, not even the year, though one has to admit the date of July 4th is indeed a memorable one.) His parents were not informed until November that he was still alive, "seen at the Indian village, near the mouth of Auglaize." (Tanner's parents were later informed by Indians that he was dead.)
(In Tanner's narrative as well as Spencer's, horses seemed to have been easily available in the woods; Spencer says that the second horse used during the transport of him after he was captured was probably an army pack horse (52).)
After six days Spencer arrived with his captors at the Indian village at the confluence of "the Auglaize and Maumee, or Miami of the Lake" (72). Was this Blue Jackets Town? According to Spencer, the Five Nations (Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, the Onondagas and Senecas) "claimed the territory as far west as the Mississippi and southward to the Cherokee, or Tennessee River" (75). [I wonder where Spencer got this fallacious notion.] The Mohawks had dispersed among other Indian nations after their total defeat by the American colonists by 1770. (I believe they were called Mingos in Ohio--I met once a Mohawk iron worker from Ohio.) The Shawnee village was located a mile below the mouth of the Auglaize (76). It was probably Blue Jackets village because he met Blue Jacket at the village where his captor Wawpawwawquaw lived.
(According to White's map, p. 414, there was a British fort/white settlement from 1791 to 1794 called Defiance at the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize.) Spence mentions a "British Indian trader" named George Ironside (77). Spencer meets the infamous Indian hater Simon Girty and describes him:
"One of the visiters [sic] of Blue Jacket was [...] Simon Girty, whether it was from prejudice, associating with his look the fact, that he was a renegado, the murderer of his own countrymen, racking his diabolic invention to inflict new and more excruciating tortures, or not, his dark shaggy hair; his low forehead; his brows contracted, and meeting above his short flat nose [notice the simian features he gives Girty to make him seem to be subhuman]; his grey sunken eyes, averting the ingenuous gaze; his lips thin and compressed, and the dark and sinister expression of his countenance, to me, seemed the very picture of a villain. He wore the Indian costume, but without any ornament; and his silk handkerchief, while it supplied the place of a hat, hid an unsightly wound on his forehead. On each side, in his belt, was stuck a silver mounted pistol, and at his left hung a short broad dirk, serving occasionally the uses of a knife. [...] He spoke of the wrongs he had received at the hands of his countrymen, and with fiendish exultation of the revenge he had taken. He boasted of his exploits, of the number of his victories, and of his personal prowess; then raising his handkerchief, and exhibiting the deep wound in his forehead, (which I was afterward told was inflicted by the tomahawk of the celebrated Indian chief, Brandt, in a drunken frolic,) said it was a sabre cut, which he received in battle at St. Clair's defeat; adding with an oath, that he had 'sent the d___d Yankee officer' that gave it, 'to h__l'. He ended by telling me that I would never see home; but if I should 'turn out to be a good hunter, and a brave warrior, I might one day be a chief'. His presence and conversation having rendered my situation painful, I was not a little relieved when, a few hours after, ending our visit, we returned to our quiet lodge on the bank of the Maumee" (87-8).
Ft. Defiance was erected by Gen. Wayne in 1794 on the site of five or six cabins and log houses "inhabited principally by Indian traders" (89), and one in particular, George Ironside (at the time Spencer was there in 1792), "the most wealthy and influential of the traders on the point" (89). Also there were Pirault (Pero), a French baker, and M'Kenzie, a Scot who was in merchandizing and was a silversmith, "exchanging with the Indians his brooches, ear-drops, and other silver ornaments at an enormous profit, for skins and furs" (89); "two American prisoners, Henry Ball, a soldier taken at St. Clair's defeat, and his wife, Polly Meadows, captured at the same time [and] were allowed to live here, and by labour to pay their master the price of their ransom; he by boating to the rapids of the Maumee, and she by washing and sewing" (89). Also, Girty's brother James lived in a small stockade "enclosing two hewed lof houses" (89), James in one of them and M'Kee and Elliot, "British Indian agents, living at Detroit" (90), in the other occasionally. This M'Kee and Elliot were Alexander McKee and Matthew Elliott.
Alexander McKee: son of Thomas McKee and a Shawnee woman; served as a "British Indian commissary," a role common among the French métis, which was an intermediary role in which he served to explain "the Indians to the British and the British to the Indians" (White, 324). McKee and Elliott acted as "British chiefs. They were at once mediators and men advancing their own positions and their own interests" (456).
Spencer notes, re "spirituous liquor" and "drunken revel," that Indians, in their "acts committed in a state of ebriety, "ascribe them--the injuries sustained--"wholly to the 'fire water'" (100). Also, he notes that they get revenge for wrongs when sober under cover of ebriety, especially within the family (101). "At such times and under such circumstances, it is peculiarly dangerous for prisoners (many of whom fall a sacrifice to the brutal barbarity of drunken Indians,) to encounter them" (101). "[...] their drunken song, 'Ha yaw ki-you-wan-nie, Hi haw nit-ta-koo-pee'" (100-1).
Tanner describes a poignant, counter example of an Indian not seeking revenge. His foster father, Taw-ga-we-ninne, was "killed," having been hit in the forehead with a large stone. Tanner was thirteen at the time when his foster mother told him to go and see his father, "who was killed." He entered the lodge where his foster father was lying down:
"When I went in, my father said to me, 'I am killed'. He made me sit down with the other children, and talked much to us. He said, 'Now, my children, I have to leave you. I am sorry that I must leave you so poor.' He said nothing to us about killing the Indian who had struck him with the stone, as some would have done. He was too good a man to wish to involve his family in the troubles which such a course would have brought upon them. The young man who had wounded him, remained with us, notwithstanding that Net-no-kwa [Tanner's foster mother] told him it would not be safe for him to go to Red River, where her husband's [Taw-ga-we-ninne] relatives were numerous and powerful, and disposed to take revenge" (Tanner, 41).
After almost two weeks, Tanner's foster father did not recover. Tanner was called back home from a trip to the trading-house when he was told his father was dying and wished to see him before he died:
"When I came into the lodge, I found that he was indeed dying, and though he could see, he was not able to speak to me. In a few minutes he ceased to breathe. Beside him lay the gun which he had taken in his hand a few minutes before, to shoot the young man who had wounded him at Mackinac. In the morning, when I left him to go to the Portage, he was apparently well; my mother told me it was not until afternoon, he began to complain; he then came into the lodge saying, 'I am now dying; but since I have to go, this young man, who has killed me, must go with me. I hoped to have lived till I had raised you all to be men; but now I must die, and leave you poor, and without any one to provide for you.' So saying, he stepped out, with the gun in his hand, to shoot the young man, who was at that time sitting by the door of his own lodge. Ke-wa-tin [one of Taw-ga-we-ninne's sons], hearing this, began to cry, and, addressing his father, said, 'My father, if I was well I could help you to kill this man, and could protect my young brothers from the vengeance of his friends, after he is dead; but you see my situation, and that I am about to die [Ke-wa-tin had suffered a knee injury]. My brothers are young and weak, and we shall all be murdered if you kill this man.' My father replied, 'My son I love you too well to refuse you any thing you request.' So saying, he returned, laid down his gun, and, after having said a very few words, inquired for me, and directed them to send for me, he expired. The old woman procured a coffin from the traders, and they brought my father's body, in a wagon, to the trading-house, on this side the Grand Portage, where they buried him, in the burying ground of the whites. His two sons, as well as the young man who killed him, accompanied his body to the Portage. This last was near being killed by one of my brothers; but the other prevented him, as he was about to strike" (42).
(Spencer mentions a Wells on page 105. Is this William Wells that White mentions on page 500? My hunch is is that it's not.)
After the defeat of St. Clair (Nov. 1791), it became, according to White, a matter of who the Americans were for the Indians, the Other for the Indians, the confederation of Western Indians (White, 456): "Instead of being specific negotiations of agreed-upon differences, the diplomatic conversation was a struggle over images and it took place within rather rather than between groups" (456, my emphasis). It was a "diplomacy of mirrors" (456). "The common world yielded to a frontier over which people crossed only to shed blood" (456). In other words, "killings rather than the peace proposals the [American] emissaries brought [to the Indians] became the diplomatic issue" (457). The issue was supposed to be about peace but "attempts to negotiate peace involved little change in the substantive boundary issues" (457). The US's policy was that the Indians were not a conquered people since the Revolution was not about conquering the Indians and the US did not have title to Indian lands by right of conquest nor did England. "The land was the Algonquians to sell to the United States or to keep as they chose" (457). The US claimed that England had not ceded the Indians' land. This tactic deflated some Indians' attempts to convince other Indians that the US had designs on taking their lands. In fact, it strengthened the US's hand in dividing the confederacy of Indians, especially as "[t]he lands ceded in the existing treaties threatened only the Shawnees, refugee Cherokees, Delawares, Wyandots, Mingos, and various fragments of more recent immigrants from the East such as the Munsees" (457).
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