His Majesty's Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in The Defence of Canada, 1774-1815

His Majesty’s

Indian Allies

British Indian Policy in

The Defence of Canada, 1774–1815

Robert S. Allen

His Majesty’s

Indian Allies

British Indian Policy in

The Defence of Canada, 1774–1815

Robert S. Allen

© Copyright Robert S. Allen, 1993

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press Limited. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Reprography Collective.

Editing: Diane Mew

Printing and Binding: Gagné Printing Ltd., Louiseville, Quebec, Canada

Dundurn Press wishes to acknowledge the generous assistance and ongoing support of The Canada Council, The Book Publishing Industry Development Program of the Department of Communications, The Ontario Arts Council, The Ontario Heritage Foundation and the Ontario Publishing Centre of the Ministry of Culture and Communications.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in the text, including the illustrations. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any reference or credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, Publisher

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Allen, Robert S.

His Majesty’s Indian allies

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-55002-175-3 (bound). – ISBN 1-55002-184-2 (pbk.)

1. Indians of North America – Canada – Government relations – To 1830.* 2. Indians of North America – Government relations – To 1789. 3. Indian of North America – Wars – 1750-1815. 4. Great Britain. British Indian Dept. – History. I. Title.

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CONTENTS

Preface

PART ONE: British-Indian Relations in Colonial America to 1774

1 Forging the Chain of Friendship

2 Sir William Johnson and the Indian Department

PART TWO: Rebellion and Resistance, 1774–1796

3 The American Rebellion and the Frontier

4 The Struggle for the Ohio Valley

PART THREE: In the Defence of Canada, 1796–1815

5 Renewing the Chain of Friendship

6 The War of 1812: Michilimackinac and Upper Canada

7 The War of 1812: The Northwest

PART FOUR: Government-Indian Relations in the Post-1815 Years: Canada and the United States

8 From Warriors to Wards

9 Epilogue: Recasting the Chain of Friendship

Appendices

Notes

Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

This study was initiated several years ago as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Wales (Aberystwyth). Its aim was to redress or balance the historiographical ledger pertaining to the events of 1774 to 1815 on the Great Lakes frontier by focusing on the old province of Quebec. Sources for this period, both printed and unpublished, are numerous, with new studies continually appearing. But apart from the writings of A.L. Burt some fifty years ago, most notably his The United States, Great Britain and British North America, and the more recent scholarship of such historians as Jack Sosin, Reginald Horsman, and George F.G. Stanley, the majority of scholars engaged in this subject tend to concentrate on such themes as American Indians, the fur trade, United States Indian policy, military campaigns, American westward expansion, and Anglo-American diplomatic relations. The constant among them is their failure to assess in any great detail the central importance for Great Britain during these critical four decades of preserving and defending Canada. The analysis which follows therefore is not a retelling of events, but a reinterpretation of the strategies and policies devised by crown officials to secure, largely through the military use and assistance of Indian allies, the survival of Canada, and thus the continuation of a British political and economic influence and empire in North America.

Within the text, three points relating to definition or terminology require brief explanations. First, the territorial limits of Canada as defined in the documents between the years 1774 to 1815 meant and included in general terms only the lands which now constitute the southern portions of the provinces of Quebec (including the Eastern Townships) and Ontario from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Montreal, and west along the north shores of the upper St. Lawrence, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie to the Detroit River. The northern limits were vaguely defined, but stopped at Rupert’s Land, a vast area which by royal charter in 1670 granted the Hudson’s Bay Company the exclusive trading rights and ownership to all the lands drained by the rivers flowing into James Bay and Hudson Bay. For the purposes of this study, therefore, Canada excludes the present Atlantic provinces, the prairie provinces, British Columbia, and the North.

Second, for general clarity and easier identification, Indian tribal names and personalities have been anglicized. For instance, Ojibwa and Six Nations Confederacy of Iroquois rather than Anishnabwe and Ho-dé-no-sau-nee or their derivatives will be used. As for the names of prominent Indian leaders, wherever possible when first introduced, the person will be identified by the anglicized name followed in brackets by a form of the real or traditional name. Thereafter, only the anglicized version will be employed. Thus, Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) or Black Hawk (Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak) will be referred to thereafter as Joseph Brant or Black Hawk.

Third, the expression in common usage during the period of this study to identify a person from Scotland was Scotch, and since even Robbie Burns applied the term to his countrymen, I have chosen to use Scotch in the text rather than the later and now more popular English affectation of Scots or Scottish.

During the research and preparation of this study, I received every courtesy and assistance from my colleagues in Ottawa at the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, the staffs of several archives, museums, and libraries in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain, and from friends. To all these people I extend my sincere thanks and deep sense of gratitude. In particular, at Indian Affairs, I would like to thank Dr. Katie Cook, ex-director of the Corporate Policy Branch, and Lizzie Fraikin, ex-director of the Comprehensive Claims Branch, for supporting me in this undertaking. Also at Indian Affairs, thanks are due to John F. Leslie and Jack Stagg for valuable comments made on draft chapters; to Hélène Lanthier, Susan Mongrain, Julia Finn, and Karla Weys of the departmental library for always responding in an efficient and good-natured fashion to numerous requests and queries over the years; and to my colleagues at the Claims and Historical Research Centre for covering for me.

In Canada and the United States, I acknowledge and thank the staffs at the National Archives of Canada (Ottawa), and especially David Hume, Lisa Patterson, and Mary Jane Commanda, all experts on Records Relating to Indian Affairs; and to the Ontario Archives (Toronto), the Metropolitan Toronto Library, the McCord Museum Archives (Montreal), Harry Bosveld at Fort Malden National Historic Park (Amherstburg), and Carl Benn at Old Fort York (Toronto). My appreciation is also extended to the staffs at the National Archives (Washington, DC), the Library of Congress (Washington, DC), the Detroit Public Library (Burton Historical Collection) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Washington, DC).

In Great Britain the primary documentation germane to this study is rich and voluminous, and I profited immeasurably from my research efforts in both London and Wales. In this regard my appreciation and thanks are extended to the staffs at the British Library (Department of Manuscripts), especially for the abundance of Additional Manuscripts made available from the Haldimand Collection, the Public Record Office (Kew) where the little-used Audit Office Declared Accounts of senior officials in the British Indian Department in North America were canvassed, the House of Lords Record Office which provided relatively untapped information through a series of Main Papers detailing the Burgoyne and St. Leger campaigns of 1777, the National Register of Archives and the Historical Manuscripts Commission, the Institute of Historical Research, the National Army Museum and the library of the Royal Commonwealth Society.

In Wales the staff at the Welch Regiment Museum (Cardiff) greatly facilitated my research endeavours by allowing me unlimited access to materials, of which a rare, hand-written account of the War of 1812 entitled The War in Canada proved especially valuable. At Aberystwyth, the National Library of Wales houses among its collections the Tredegar Park Muniments, of which the John Bradstreet Papers were found to be a useful source of information; and at the Hugh Owen Library of the University of Wales, Mrs. Chadwick and Mr. Brinkley provided reference assistance and showed me every kindness, for which I extend personal thanks.

In the preparation of the maps and in the gathering and selection of the illustrations and appendices, I received the assistance and advice of a number of people. To Ronald French (Okwaho), a skilled cartographer who drew the maps and printed the place names, all of which were devised by the author and relate solely to the events detailed in this study, my grateful thanks. I would also like to thank the Picture Division of the National Archives of Canada for permission to reproduce several of the illustrations in the text, and especially to Jim Burant who alerted me to the two rare paintings recently acquired by the archives through a private purchase – Two Ottawa Chiefs and the Deputation of Indian allies from the Mississippi Valley. In addition, I thank the following organizations: the Public Record Office for the Audit Office Declared Accounts of Daniel Claus Esq., the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts for the Great Indian Council, the Ontario Archives for the list of Indian warriors in 1812, the Chicago Historical Society for the rarely viewed oil painting of Black Hawk, and the McCord Museum of Canadian History both for Fort McKay and the previously unseen Speech of Robert Dickson Esq. to Indian tribes in January 1813, which was carefully photocopied for me.

To my Mohawk friends, Kahn-Tineta Horn and Ronald French of Kahnawake, Don Maracle of Tyendinaga, and Phil Monture of Ohsweken, Nia: wen Agwekenh. Equally, tansi to Sidney Fine Day, Plains Cree elder of Treaty Six, for allowing me a glimpse of Indian spiritual life.

To Wendy Pickard and Marianne Moore, both of whom successfully undertook the onerous task of deciphering and processing all the rough notes and words, I extend heartfelt thanks and gratitude. Their mastery of the technical complexities of the Wordperfect 5.1 system remains a bewildering and remarkable accomplishment to a Luddite like me.

To my tutor Dr. Boyd Stanley Schlenther, senior lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Wales, my most sincere thanks for the academic council and guidance provided to me during the research and writing of this study.

I would also like to thank Kirk Howard and the staff of Dundurn Press for their professional guidance, and Diane Mew, editorial consultant, who almost convinced me that revising could be a pleasant experience.

Last, because she always gets the last word, an abiding and affectionate thanks to my wife Karen, a woman of extraordinary patience and understanding who stayed the course.

PART ONE

British-Indian Relations in Colonial America to 1774

CHAPTER 1

FORGING THE CHAIN OF FRIENDSHIP

Sir William Johnson, His Britannic Majesty’s Sole Agent for and Superintendent of the Affairs of Our faithfull Subjects and Allies the six united Nations of Indians and their Confederates in the Northern Parts of North America, died in the early evening of 11 July 1774 at Johnson Hall in the Mohawk Valley of the British province of New York.¹ From 1755 to 1774, this self-interested yet devoted servant of the crown had directed with energy, skill, and success the affairs of the Indians in the Northern District. Prior to the pivotal influence of the Johnson regime, Indian affairs in the American colonies had been marked by a long, vexing, and generally rudderless period of imperial salutary neglect. Inter-colonial land rivalries and wrangling disunity had only further complicated British-Indian relations, which fluctuated between the benign and the intolerable. But by the 1750s the looming and final conflict with France for paramountcy in North America turned British vacillation into resolve. The appointment by royal commission of a single crown official for the administration and management of Indian affairs was therefore a sensible if long overdue imperial initiative. Finally, after 150 years of permanent British settlement along the eastern shores of the new world, a formal and centralized policy for the aboriginal or native people had emanated from Britain.

The vehicle for implementing the policy directives was the British Indian Department, the forerunner of the present Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. For the next sixty years, until the end of the War of 1812, the fundamental tenet of that policy was to court and maintain the allegiance of the native people to the royal cause. As a result, and especially in the post-1774 years against the common enemy – the Americans – an enduring and symbiotic relationship evolved between the native people and the British crown in North America which was rooted in the mutual need and desire for protection and survival.² British Indian policy from 1774 to 1815 was thus geared primarily to ensuring the preservation and defence of Canada through the military use and assistance of His Majesty’s Indian allies.

Among the Eastern Woodland Indian tribes of the Great Lakes region, the Mohawk of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee or People of the Longhouse, were the earliest and staunchest allies of the British crown.³ Like all native tribes in the Americas, the Longhouse people possessed a strong spiritual bond with the land and the natural environment. Through the teachings of the Creator (the Great Spirit), they revered all living things, from plants and animals to the forests, rivers, lakes, and mountains. Communal sharing of the sacred land through the sustainable development of resources was traditionally practised, and the concept of individual ownership was unknown or unthinkable. The native people considered themselves to be the custodians or stewards of the land, and as such honour-bound to protect it for the benefit of the next generation. The arrival and settlement of Europeans, therefore, who felled and burned the trees, polluted the waters, and fenced vast areas was akin to the raping of Mother Earth. These two diametrically opposed beliefs concerning the natural environment – preservation versus progress and settlement – with the resultant and ongoing clashes over land issues and land claims, have remained the dominant feature of Indian-white relations, certainly in North America, from the moment of contact until present times.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Longhouse people, according to their oral traditions, were organized by Dekanahwideh (the Heavenly Messenger) and Hiawatha, into the League of the Iroquois. The league was initially composed of five nations – the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca – but about 1721 a sixth nation, the Tuscarora, was admitted, thus forming the Six Nations Confederacy of Iroquois. The confederacy functioned under the Great Law of Peace, a political system granting the autonomy of each nation over local interests whilst deciding general confederacy matters, such as foreign and military policy, through a grand council. This form of federalism was strengthened by the clan system which threaded through the whole confederacy and linked the various nations to each other. The Mohawk possessed only the Turtle, Wolf, and Bear clans, but there were others belonging to other nations, including Heron, Hawk, Eel, Snipe, Deer, and Beaver. Within the clan system, a Mohawk of the Turtle clan would be linked, for instance, with a Cayuga of the same clan, and indeed, the bonding between clan members was often stronger than the loyalty an individual might have for his or her particular nation.⁴

Fundamental to the operation of the confederacy was the fact that Iroquois society was based on matrilineal descent and an extended kinship in which all individuals and nations of the confederacy were one family, symbolically living together in one longhouse. This practice and principle gave women, especially the matrons or clan mothers, a special position of influence in the policies and decision-making of the confederacy, since they alone appointed or removed the clan chiefs of the grand council. There were fifty of these civil chiefs or sachems, known as royaneh (translated as lord). Their titles were hereditary within the clan, and a chief could only inherit through the lineage of his clan mother. War chiefs were also selected by the clan mothers, but again only the eligible sons of the female families holding the hereditary titles would be considered as appropriate heirs. Finally, the confederacy chiefs, from time to time, could elect a man who had proven to be wise, honest, or worthy to sit with them in the grand council. These honoured individuals, know as Pine Tree or merit chiefs, had no authority to name a successor, and the title was not hereditary.⁵

Issues affecting the whole confederacy were discussed in the grand council in a formal and ritualistic manner. A particularly distinguishing feature of the councils, common throughout the Indian world, was the use of tobacco and the extensive and significant importance of prayer. Among the Six Nations Confederacy, there were several sacred rituals, medicine societies, harvest dances and ceremonials. The Roll Call of the Chiefs, for instance, comprised one of the rites of the condolence council, a time to honour the dead and raise up a new chief.⁶ The Onondaga, as the confederacy Keepers of the Fire, also became the Keeper of the Wampum. By custom, the wampum – coloured beads woven into belts – provided an archive or record of important statements, treaties, or events in confederacy history. It was also used as gifts. The value of wampum to the Iroquois and other Indian tribes soon prompted the Europeans to establish wampum factories to produce sufficient quantities both for the Indian demand and as a form of currency among the whites.⁷ To the Indians, wampum became so popular and prized that it became a major item of exchange in the fur trade. Indeed, for the European traders, wampum was the magnet which drew the beaver out of the interior forests.⁸

For all Indians of the Americas, the most significant disruption of their lives (whether recorded on wampum or not) was the arrival of the newcomers – the Europeans. This encounter between two worlds awakened the native people from the long pristine isolation of their dreamtime to a dawn of a new era which would break upon them. As the eastern door of Iroquoia, whose traditional lands included most of the Finger Lakes in what is now upper New York, the Mohawk were the first nation of the Iroquois confederacy to make contact with these technologically dominant European newcomers. They were Dutch, and in about 1643 an unrecorded treaty of trade and peace was concluded with them by the Mohawk in which apparently an iron chain or alliance was forged against their common enemies.⁹

This agreement is known among the Iroquois as the Two Row Wampum treaty. The wampum belt consisted of two parallel rows of coloured beads sewn on a white background. The agreement purportedly stipulated that both the Mohawk (representing the Six Nations Confederacy) and the Dutch were separate but equal, with the two discrete rows of beads symbolizing that neither nation would interfere with the integrity of the other’s culture, language, laws, or religious and political systems. When the British displaced the Dutch in the Hudson Valley of New York in 1664, the precedents established in Dutch-Mohawk relations were generally assumed. Yet in two subsequent agreements in 1677, the iron chain was replaced by a symbolic Silver Covenant Chain of Friendship which enhanced the significance of the alliance. Silver was chosen, perhaps by both the Mohawk and the British, as it was more durable and beautiful and would be easier to polish and brighten when the chain needed to be renewed. The Two Row Wampum and the more encompassing and well-documented concept of a Silver Covenant Chain of Friendship symbolize for the Mohawk and the Six Nations Iroquois their status as a sovereign nation. For the British, the chain of friendship – eventually extended to include almost all the tribes of the Great Lakes – was the foundation of the British-Indian military alliances.¹⁰ The purpose to 1763 was the defence against New France; the intent from 1774 to 1815 was the defence of Canada.

In securing the chain of friendship with the Iroquois, whose lands lay between New France and New York and Pennsylvania, the British had constructed a wall unto us both by night and day to protect their trade and settlements against the French.¹¹ Thomas Dongan, governor of the royal colony of New York, was fully aware of the importance of the British-Iroquois alliance as a barrier of frontier defence, observing that the Iroquois are a bulwark between us and the French and all other Indians. Further, those five nations are very brave and the awe and Dread of all ye Indyans in these parts of America and are a better defence to us, than if they were so many Christians.¹² The great fear, however, was that if the Iroquois, who for a time held the military and economic balance of power between France and Britain in North America, decided to switch their allegiance to New France, the French would certainly dominate and control all of North America. In their relations with the Iroquois, therefore, British colonial officials were instructed to use all faire means to keep them firme and steady to the Covenant Chaine, and to make them sensible, that as they are and have always been, the subjects of the King of England, they are therefore under the care and protection of the Great King of England.¹³

The British assertion that the aboriginal or native people (in this case the Iroquois) were subject to the king was a general concept shared by Britain’s European rivals for empire in the new world. English claims in North America were based on discovery, symbolic possession (the planting of a cross or flag), and actual possession (the founding of a colony or settlement). In Virginia, for instance, the English declared: Wee seeke Dominion. But this dominion had to be absolutely good agaynst ye Naturall people.¹⁴ English rights in North America, therefore, became linked to the act of discovery, which apparently and unilaterally justified the sovereign crown acquiring the fundamental, but blurred, jurisdictional and territorial rights of imperium (the right to rule) and dominium (the right to private property).¹⁵ These self-declared English claims and rights were duly solidified by a number of royal charters or speculative grants to various individuals and companies interested in the promotion of settlement, the Christian religion, and the profits of commercial trade.

As for aboriginal rights, the English acknowledged that the Indians had a natural title to the land which sprang from the right of soil or prior occupancy. But since they were considered a wild and heathen people that live up and downe in troupes like heards of Deere in a Forrest, the English rationalized moral and legal justifications for dispossessing the Indians.¹⁶ To leave the tribes in possession of their country was to leave the new world a wilderness. The English, therefore, could either relinquish their claims and abandon the country, or enforce those claims against the fierce savages, whose occupation was war by the use of the sword and by the adoption of principles adapted to the condition of a people with whom it was impossible to mix, and who could not be governed as a distinct society.¹⁷ For the English and their European rivals, therefore, the Indians of North America could thus be allies or enemies. If they were to be enemies and disrupt the progress of a Christian and European civilization, war and conquest were deemed justified. Precedents for this method of dealing with aboriginal people were found in the previous practices of English sovereigns. In 1109, for instance, Edward I had granted Gilbert de Clare all the land of Cardigan, if he could win it from the Welsh.¹⁸ Although the purchase of Indian lands became a useful device in the American colonies (and later in Canada) for peacefully pushing aside the tribes in the face of the advancing frontier, the settlers placed minimal legal importance to these treaty agreements, and the conditions established by Edward I more closely reflected the conduct of British-Indian relations in colonial America to 1774.

For the Six Nations Confederacy of Iroquois, however, these British territorial and sovereignty claims to areas which included, for instance, Mohawk traditional lands, were not viewed by the sachems as a particularly dangerous threat. In large part, this lack of concern was the result of a fundamental misunderstanding between the Iroquois and the British. For nearly one hundred years the Iroquois had been engaged in a state of alternate peace and war with the French in North America, as both sought to control the fur trade with the western tribes of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley. In the 1640s the Iroquois smashed and dispersed the Huron (Petun) and other tribes north of Lake Ontario, and subdued some of the Ohio tribes. The French and their Indian allies invaded Iroquoia in the 1680s, but succeeded only in Warring on the cornfields. Yet, in the years following, the Ojibwa people ventured south from the upper lakes, and in a series of bloody engagements ranging from Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, through to Lake Simcoe, the Rice Lakes, and along the northern shore of Lake Ontario from the Carrying Place (Toronto) to the Bay of Quinte, drove the Iroquois from their recently established and temporary stockaded villages in vacated Huronia, and pushed them back to their traditional castles in the Finger Lakes district of upper New York.¹⁹

By 1700 the Iroquois Confederacy, although still formidable, was tired, battered, and depleted. In the summer of that year alone, sachems complained to the British that wee Sinnekes [Seneca] have lost forty of our people to the Dowaganhaes (Ojibwa) from Canada who had struck them hard by ye Sinnekes Castles.²⁰ Frustrated by these French-encouraged Indian attacks against them, the Iroquois agreed at Albany, New York, in August to cleave firm to our resolution to be instructed in the Protestant Religion and also that we shall be firm to the Covenant Chain and dutifull subjects to the Great King of England.²¹ In July of 1701 the confederacy further strengthened the alliance with the British (or so it thought) by signing over a Deed in Trust to the King of England. As allies and subjects, the Iroquois, who had suffered losses in the defence of Britain’s northern colonies against New France, decided at this time of crisis to place their beaver hunting grounds, which they had conquered some fifty years before, under the protection of the English crown. The sachems intended only that the King might be their Protector and Defender.²² There was never any thought that the deed represented a surrender of territory or sovereignty.

The British, however, regarded the deed as an extinguishment of Iroquois title to them of a vast tract of land which stretched west and north into areas claimed or coveted by the French in Canada. Here was the fundamental and grievous misunderstanding. Yet, the British also contended that the Iroquois Confederacy, being the most warlike in these parts of the world, held all their neighbouring Indians in a manner of Tributary subjection, they went sometimes as far as the South Sea [Pacific Ocean], the North West Passage and Florida to war, and extended also their conquests over that part of the Country, now called Canada.²³

Although this assessment was an exaggeration, particularly after the Grand Alliance of 1700–1701 when the Iroquois agreed to remain neutral in any future conflicts between France and Britain in North America, the confederacy indeed remained the most powerful military alliance of tribes in the Great Lakes region.²⁴ Therefore, since the Iroquois had voluntarily placed themselves and their lands under the care and protection of the English crown, the British were quite content to acknowledge and promote Iroquois claims of territorial sovereignty over huge and nebulous areas of land. The straightforward and calculated British reasoning was based on the understanding (or misunderstanding) that as subjects, yet allies, of the English crown, all Iroquois lands were under the jurisdiction of Britain. Consequently, any French attempts to expand their interests west or south towards the Ohio Valley and Mississippi River could be construed as a violation of British territorial and sovereignty rights. The perpetuation of the notion of an ambiguous Iroquois empire, therefore, at least until the French were eliminated from Canada, suited British imperial and territorial interests in North America perfectly well.

Throughout the period of the British-Iroquois alliance against the French and their Indian allies in New France, trade, religious conversion, and military defence against ye Common Enemy were the elements of mutual interest that linked them together under the Silver Covenant Chain of Friendship.²⁵ But trade was the most important commodity in keeping the alliance intact. Both sides profited and benefited from the bartering and exchanging of beaver furs for trade goods. From the moment of contact, the Indians were willing and capable partners in fur. The Montagnais in eastern Canada, for instance, told the Jesuit Fathers in 1634, that the beaver does everything perfectly well, it makes kettles, hatchets, swords, knives, bread, and in short, it makes everything.²⁶ Over one hundred years later, the secretary to Sir William Johnson echoed this continuing theme by noting that in regard to British-Iroquois relations, trade was the foundation of their Alliance or Connexions with us, it is the chief Cement whch binds us together. And this should undoubtedly be the first Principle of our whole System of Indian Politics.²⁷

The Ojibwa war, King William’s War, and the peace treaties concluded at Albany and Montreal in 1701 in which the Iroquois agreed to remain neutral in any future conflict between the British and the French, weakened the confederacy’s domination of the fur trade. But the sachems were not content to remain idle, sitting on their mats and smoking their pipes. Instead, they devised economic and diplomatic strategies that attempted to uphold the league’s power by luring the western tribes, and even the Ottawa to the north, into trading with the British at Albany, under the auspices of the confederacy. Although the sachems frequently visited Albany to renew the Covenant Chain and pledge allegiance and fidelity to the British crown, the faithful Mohawks and others of the confederacy were decidedly more interested after 1701 in maintaining their strategic position of holding the economic and military balance of power between Britain and France in North America, in order to preserve a durable peace and prosperity for Iroquoia.²⁸

But in 1726–27 the carefully constructed plan of the sachems crumbled with the intrusion into Seneca and Onondaga country of both the French and the British who built forts at Niagara and Oswego.²⁹ Thereafter, confederacy policy was transformed into ensuring the protection and security of Iroquois lands. With the outbreak of King George’s War in 1744, the threats to the league became even more severe, particularly as Iroquois neutrality was compromised by their participation in the war on behalf of the British. Yet the sachems continued to insist that they were desirous to remain at peace with the french and English, and that they were not subjects of England nor had they ceded to any one their lands, which they hold only of Heaven.³⁰ The British, however, maintained that Iroquois territory had long since been solemnly submitted to the crown, and further, that by both the Treaty of Utrecht and by the Treaty at Aix-la-Chapelle, the Iroquois were subjects of Great Britain.³¹

By the 1750s the economic lifelines and territorial parameters of Iroquoia were being squeezed ever tighter on all sides by the British, the French, and the western tribes of the Ohio, who were becoming stronger and more confident in defying the increasingly naked pretensions of Iroquois superiority. Angry and frustrated, a delegation of Mohawk met in council with the British at Fort George in the city of New York in June 1753. The respected sachem Hendrick (Theyanoguin), speaking for the Mohawk, scolded the British for their indifference and neglect and complained that Albany remained defenceless, thus leaving the Six Nations Iroquois without assistance and exposed to the enemy who held a knife over our heads to destroy us. Hendrick had come to remind you of the ancient alliance agreed on between our respective Forefathers. But with such apparent British apathy, the Mohawk sachem could only surmise that we were united by a Covenant Chain and it seems now likely to be broken not from our Fault but yours. Therefore, he concluded, as soon as we come home, we will send up a belt of Wampum to our Brothers the 5 Nations to acquaint them the Covenant Chain is broken between you and us.³²

The words of Hendrick startled New York and the Board of Trade and Plantations in London. The importance of preserving the British-Iroquois alliance was considered vital to the security of Britain’s northern colonies. In consequence, the Board ordered the holding of a general congress at Albany by the several colonies in order to resolve any differences between the British and the Six Nations Confederacy. In part, the result of this directive was the Albany Congress of June and July 1754 and the Plan of a proposed Union of the several Colonies . . ., for their mutual defence and security, and for extending the British Settlements in North America. But at the same time a major council was held at Albany with the Iroquois. Hendrick again harangued the British and colonial representatives by demanding that they open their eyes and look about your Country and see, you have no Fortifications about you, no not even this City, ‘tis but one Step from Canada hither, and the French may easily come and turn you out of your doors.³³ Yet, in spite of Iroquois bitterness and unresolved grievances, the sachems were reconciled to the idea of accepting a renewal of the British-Iroquois Covenant Chain of Friendship, based on mutual protection and survival.

Although the Albany plan for a proposed union was stalled by both the individual colonies and the Board of Trade and Plantations (and was eventually to collapse), the Board was resolute in recommending that the management of Indian affairs be placed under