The Indian as a diplomatic factor in the history of the Old Northwest : a paper read before the Chicago historical society March 28, 1907

THE INDIAN AS A DIPLOMATIC FACTOR

IN THE HISTORY OF THE OLD

NORTHWEST

A PAPER READ BEFORE

THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

MARCH 28, 1907

ISAAC

COX

ASSISTANT PRO

PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY
1910

THE INDIAN AS A DIPLOMATIC FACTOR

IN THE HISTORY OF THE OLD

NORTHWEST

A PAPER READ BEFORE

THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

MARCH 28, 1907

ISAAC JOSLIN COX

ASSISTANT

BY THE SOOETY
191O

,

THE INDIAN AS A DIPLOMATIC FACTOR IN THE
HISTORY OF THE OLD NORTHWEST.

One merely asserts a truism when he states that the
North American Indian is the predominant factor in the
early history of the Northwest; and that in no other field
is this more apparent than in its diplomacy. It is true
that one may well hesitate to apply such a dignified title
to a policy often characterized by senseless deceit,
audacious theft, and other accompaniments of mere low
intrigue; or to a policy which if free from these blemishes
was still powerless to assure essential justice to the con
tracting parties; yet the fact remains that in formal cere
mony, in the extent of territory involved, and in subse
quent results many of the treaties with the aborigines
of this section rank in importance with the significant
results of European diplomacy.

In this Northwestern diplomacy we may readily group
the important events into three distinctive periods. The
first is distinguished as the period of international com
plications between England and France, with Spain as
a minor and largely negligible factor. The second period
may be described as a domestic interlude between two
international movements, during which the interests of
the British Imperial Government and its red wards are
involved with those of its colonies, of private traders and
of would-be colonizing companies. Later in this same
period these latter interests play an important part in
the domestic affairs of the newly liberated states and of
their embryo national government. The creation by the
latter of a well defined area — the "Territory Northwest
of the Ohio River" — closes the second period and ushers
in the third, which is characterized by the struggle be-

209

333392

tween the United States and Great Britain for the pos
session of the above territory. It is this period that con
stitutes the important era of Northwestern diplomacy
and comprises the major portion of this paper.

The above division is adopted for the sake of con
venience in grouping facts and in no sense implies that
the tendencies or movements of one period do not reap
pear in a later one, but that their presence and influence
give greater emphasis to a certain epoch. For instance,
the first period may be said to end with 1763, but French
diplomacy and intrigue continue as important secondary
factors in the history of the Northwest as well as of the
whole Mississippi valley, for the following half century.1
On the other hand domestic questions ever play an im
portant part, even when international complications
seem to control the situation, as is shown by the effect
in 1814 of Harrison's Indian treaties upon the negotia
tions about to commence at Ghent.2 Yet while no one
set of influences is in absolute control at any one stage
of our discussion, convenience will lead to the adoption
of the above mentioned divisions.

Let us proceed to a brief consideration of the first of
these periods, the struggle between France and England
for the mastery of the American continent. For the
present other European nations may be disregarded.
Spain, long since content with Florida and her Mexican
vice-royalty, is too remote from the future Northwest
Territory to be vitally interested in its disposal. The
English have absorbed the claims of the Dutch along
the Atlantic coast and are beginning to turn their atten
tion to the immediate interior, where French influences

1 For the best survey of the attitude of France towards the
United States in genera) and the Mississippi valley in particular,
see the articles by Prof. F. J. Turner in the American Historical
Review, Vols. III. and X., and the collections of documents in Ibid.
II. and III., and in the Reports of the American Historical Associa
tion for 1897 and 1903.

2 Cf. John Quincy Adams, Memoirs, Vol. III., p. 43.

210

are already present. Between their outposts on the
Hudson and those of the French in the valley of the St.
Lawrence lay the ever-present Indian factor — this time
personified in the various Iroquois tribes. This power
ful confederacy not only occupied the territory between
the two European rivals, but themselves exercised a sort
of indefinite suzerainty over other Indians as far west as
the Mississippi. This rendered the aid of these confed
erated tribes doubly important to the nation that desired
to control the interior. How to secure this aid was the
problem that for nearly a century occupied the attention
of the more intelligent and far-seeing of the British
officials upon this continent, and how to neutralize their
efforts the perennial task of their French rivals.

The hostile course of Champlain had aroused among
the Iroquois an antipathy to the French which his suc
cessors vainly sought to remove. This antipathy was
reinforced by the greater material resources of the Eng
lish colonists for carrying on the fur trade, and this in
turn early gave a mercenary bias to the struggle for the
control of the Northwest — a characteristic that it re
tained to the end. By the close of the seventeenth cen
tury, however, the Iroquois began to profess a desire to
remain neutral in the conflict. If this was their sincere
wish, they were destined to be disappointed. From the
days of Governor Dongan, who by his attractive manner
secured tokens of fealty to his master, James, Duke of
York, to the treaty of Lancaster, in 1744, we have a
series of documents showing the increasing influence of
the English over the Iroquois. It is true that many of
the documents are of doubtful origin or of hypothetical
value, but whatever their character, they show that
England was slowly gaining over France, in her race for
territory in the Northwest.

The rival claims of the two nations were first given
a definite diplomatic standing in the Treaty of Utrecht

211

in 1713. This treaty provided for a delimitation of the
claims of the Hudson's Bay Company and the French
Colony of Canada, and thus indirectly had some bearing
upon the extreme northwestern limit of this territory.
Of more immediate importance, however, was the ac
knowledgment that the Iroquois were subject to Eng
lish rather than French control. The Indians were not
consulted in the treaty, and the French later refused to
acknowledge the full pretentious which the English
claimed by virtue of it, but, nevertheless, it constitutes a
land mark in American diplomacy and especially in that
of the Northwest.

In keeping with the above treaty, the English author
ities later produced a series of documents, purporting to
be deeds to territory lying on the northern and southern
shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. These deeds are
of more than doubtful validity — at least they may be at
tacked by documents of similar character, expressing
Iroquois allegiance to the French King.1 There is, how
ever, no question regarding the fact of the most impor
tant of the cessions of this character — that of the Treaty
of Lancaster.2 In 1744 , under the influence of English,
the Iroquois chiefs acknowledged the validity of the
western claims of Virginia, based on her colonial char
ters, and thus gave substance, if not form, to the English
claim to the Ohio valley. Virginia must still make good
her claim against her sister colonies, and Great Britain
must assert their united claim against encroaching
French pretentious. The latter phase of the question
was decided by the Seven Years' War; the former re
mained a disturbing domestic factor, until it was settled
by a definite renunciation of state claims and the crea
tion of the Northwest Territory.

1They are given for the most part in Documents Relating to the
Colonial History of New York, Vols. V. and IX.. passim.

2C/. Pennsylvania Colonial Records, IV., 693-937.

212

The struggle between England and France for the
control of this territory became critical when each
reached out to possess the key to the Ohio valley — the
junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. For
a period of eight decades, from Marquette and Joliet
to Celeron de Bienville, French occupation had advanced
by a series of slow strides from the West until all the
available portages but one, between the Great Lakes and
the Mississippi, were in their possession. During the
same time the tide of English settlement was ap
proaching the crest of the Alleghanies and threatening
to advance beyond. Already English traders had at
tempted to penetrate to the far Northwest and had been
checked by the French establishments on the Wabash
and at Detroit. Now a new movement begins in which fur
trader and surveyor push forward to extend the interests
respectively of Pennsylvania and of Virginia among the
Ohio Indians, and to inaugurate an Anglo-American pol
icy in the Northwest. Once in contact with the Eng
lish pioneer, the days of the Canadian vovageur are
numbered and his uncertain hold upon the great interior
valley quickly loosened. Even the sturdy resistance of
his Indian ally was unavailing to prolong his dominion.

The Treaty of Paris, of February 10th, 1763, closed
the first period of Northwestern diplomacy and ushered
in the second — a quarter century primarily of domestic
policy, yet profoundly influenced by international com
plications which involved the shifting of continental
control and the birth of a new nation on this side of the
Atlantic. The treaty itself first brought into being what
was destined to be the future western limit of the North
west Territory, for it made the Mississippi a boundary
between the possessions of Spain and of Great Britain
upon the American continent.

The colonial policy of the British Government dur
ing the years following the Treaty of Paris tended to

213

emphasize other limits of the future Northwest Territory.
As a first step in this policy we may mention the Royal
Proclamation of October 7th, 1763. Although the line
limiting the original colonies as established by this proc
lamation, lay some distance to the eastward of any part
of its future area, yet the emphasis placed by it upon
Indian relations is thoroughly characteristic of later
British policy in this same Northwest. This proclama
tion paved the way for the subsequent Indian treaties at
Ft. Stanwix (1768) and Lochabor (1770), by which the
northern and southern Indians agreed to a fairly definite
line of demarcation between the white settlements and
the lands reserved for their own use. A portion of this
line from above Ft. Pitt to the mouth of the Kanawha
river was recognized by both treaties, while that of Ft.
Stanwix prolonged it to the mouth of the Tennessee.
Thus, what was afterward to be the south-eastern limit
of the Northwest Territory, received its first definition.
The policy both of the proclamation and of the treaties
was one designed to protect the rapidly advancing fron
tier by winning the confidence of the Indians and assur
ing the latter of the essential justice of the British
government.1

That this policy did not involve a repression of
white settlement is shown by the fact that the British
authorities almost immediately began to entertain pro
posals looking to an occupation of their western territory,
and particularly of that portion between the mountains
and the Ohio recently ceded by the Indians. The most
noteworthy of these proposed new colonies was that of
Vandalia, in which Benjamin Franklin was interested.
The northern boundary of this embryo government was
to be the Ohio from the western boundary of Pennsyl
vania to a point opposite the mouth of the Scioto. Thus

JFarrand, The Indian Boundary Line, in American Historical
Review, Vol. X., p. 782 ff.

214

the proposed cession emphasized the former river as the
line of separation between the white man and the red.
A later land scheme, the Transylvania Company, like
wise proposed the Ohio river, from the Kentucky to the
Cumberland, as its northern limit. The outbreak of the
Revolution alone prevented the realization of these
schemes and an early delimitation of the territory south
of the Ohio.1

Another movement on the part of the British gov
ernment shows an approach to the same territory from
the opposite direction, and apparently from a different
motive. In reality, however, the purpose of the Quebec
Act of 1774 does not differ from that of the Proclamation
of 1763, and the ensuing Indian treaties, although the
strife of the Revolutionary period gave it another inter
pretation. An examination of the subject shows that
the British government was simply continuing the policy
of protecting its native wards and of regulating trade
with them. For this and other administrative purposes
it was more convenient to attach the territory east of the
Mississippi and north of the Ohio to Quebec than to any
other settled government, and it was so done in the
above act.2

By these various proclamations, treaties, and enact
ments, the British government emphasized the Ohio as
the line of separation between civilization and savagery,
although we must not define our terms too closely on
either side of the line. To the possible objection that
these transactions do not constitute diplomacy in its
truest sense, we may confidently affirm that the various
methods by which rival land companies played their
parts against each other and the Indian, both in England
and America, certainly come under the definition of in-

1 Alden, New Governments Westofthe Alleghanies, pp. 20-28, 57.
2 Coffin, The Province of Quebec and the Early American Revo
lution, p. 39. ff.

215

trigue, if not that of the more honorable term, and con
form to the statement of our opening paragraph.

With the outbreak of the Revolution the scene of
interest for the above plans is shifted to the Thirteen
colonies that have now become independent states.
With the revival of their claims to the western lands,
the operations of intriguing land companies are trans
ferred to the state legislatures or to the Continental
Congress, where they play a minor part in the discussions
between the States' Rights and National parties. The
interests of the various states are, however, so conflict
ing as to lead to a mutual renunciation of claims, begin
ning with New York in 1780 and closing with Virginia in
1784, by which the territory northwest of the Ohio is
finally organized under the famous ordinance of 1787.
Upon this new national basis there is the opportunity
for questions relating to the Northwest again to assume
international importance, and we enter upon the third
and most important period into which our subject is
divided.

Before proceeding to the details of this third period,
it may be well to consider what the first two periods have
definitely contributed to our subject. International
treaty and Indian negotiation, aided by a colonial land
policy, have definitely marked out two boundaries of the
future Northwest Territory — the Mississippi on the west
and the Ohio on the southeast. In addition British pro
cedure has emphasized the fact that this region is to
remain an Indian territory, and British officials are un
able to appreciate a different policy even thirty years
after it has nominally passed out of their control. This
is the significant fact in the history of the Northwest
from this time until after the the war of 1812.

The first important contribution to the third period
of Indian diplomacy in the Northwest is a memoir con
nected with the name of Vergennes, the Minister of

216

State of Louis XVI. of France. This memoir was un
doubtedly composed before the American alliance in 1778
and considered the probable action of France in case the
United States should win its independence. He favored
the restriction of the new states to the territory west of
the Alleghanies; France should enter into the contest
and force from Great Britain the cession of the western
part of Canada, which united to Louisiana was to form
a new colonial empire for the French monarchy. It is
interesting to add that he proposes to make of the
greater part of the region between the Ohio, the Missis
sippi and the Lakes an Indian reserve and thus to con
tinue the policy of Great Britain as well as revert to the
original French system. l

The danger from this proposal, whether rightly at
tributed to Vergennes or not, is shown by the fact that
since 1763 England had feared the presence of French
and Spanish emissaries in this region, and that this fear
became pronounced during the early years of the Revo
lution.2 Not only the Northwest, but Canada, was
threatened by these rovers among the discontented Indi
ans; while to add to this fear, after the outbreak of hos
tilities with Spain in 1779, came the capture of the
lower Mississippi by Galvez and the Spanish expedition
from St Louis to Ft. St Josephs on Lake Michigan in
the winter of 1780-81, Spain was becoming more than
interested spectator of the disposal of the territory be
tween the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, and France
more than a willing ally to serve her purpose.

Whether Vergennes was or was not the author of the
above memoir it certainly is completely in accord with
the purpose later revealed by his secretary, Rayneval,

1 Cf. Turner, in the Am. Hist. Rev. X., 250-252. A copy of this
memoir is in the King Collection of the Historical and Philosophi
cal Society of Ohio.

2Brymner, Report of the Canadian Archives for 1800, p. 91 ff :
Ibid, for 1887, p. 205 ff.

217

to restrict the western pretentions of the Americans, in
order to favor Spain. While in Paris in 1782, during the
preliminary negotiations with Great Britain, John Jay
held some interviews with d'Aranda, the Spanish min
ister at the French court, in the course of which the lat
ter had told him that the Spanish government expected
the United States to be satisfied with a boundary line
running from western Georgia to the Ohio at the mouth
of the Kanawha, thence around the western shores of Lake
Erie and Lake Huron, enclosing Michigan, to the end
of Lake Superior. The Spanish minister seemed sur
prised that Jay insisted upon the Mississippi as the
boundary, and dwelt upon the fact that the western
country belonged to the Indians. In furtherance of the
Spaniard's policy Rayneval, Vergennes' secretary, later
addressed to Jay a memoir in which he tried to show that
it was the policy of the British government from 1755
to 1763 not to consider the territory beyond the moun
tains as belonging to the original colonies. Accordingly
he proposed that the territory south of the Ohio should
remain an Indian reservation under the joint protection
of Spain and the United States; that the latter should
give up its demand for the navigation of the Mississippi,
and that the status of the territory north of the Ohio
should be determined by negotiations with the court of
London. According to his proposal the powers of
Europe were to share the feast and America to have the
leavings.

The submission of this memoir and the later secret
visits of Rayneval to London convinced Jay that he and
his fellow commissioners had nothing to hope for from
the Court of France. Recent discussion of the conditions
surrounding the making of this treaty seem to show that
Jay and likewise John Adams, were probably too suspi
cious of Vergennes and Rayneval, and that the French
minister was probably acting for the best interests of his

218

own country in supporting the claims of Spain and in
endeavoring to bring hostilities to a speedy close.1

When the United States commissioners had once
taken matters in their own hands the event presaged a
treaty in which their interests were not to suffer, to
say the least. The spirit of conciliation which dictated
the policy of the British commissioners at Paris finally
resulted in a northern and western limit which embraced
all territory that the United States could naturally ex
pect to acquire. By their instructions the American
representatives had been directed to obtain a line run
ning from the point where the 45th parallel crossed the
St. Lawrence, directly west to Lake Nipissing and thence
to the Mississippi.2 Such a line disregarded natural
features, and when the British commissioners proposed
as an alternative the present line following the middle
course of the Great Lakes and finally terminating in the
Lake of the Woods, the American commissioners readily
accepted the change. 3 In all probability the former line
would have been of more immediate advantage, had the
Americans been prepared to assume military possession
of the entire area, for it would have meant the absolute
control of the two lower lakes, together with the greater
part of Huron and of Michigan, and thus it would have in
sured the immediate enjoyment of the fur trade. In the
long run, however, the resources of the upper portion of
Michigan and of Wisconsin have established the wisdom
of the Americans in accepting as they did the present
northern boundary of our section.

Apparently the Northwest with its natural bound-

irThe best summary of the attitude of France toward America
in 1782-83 is to be found in McLaughlin's The Confederation and
the Constitution (Am. Nation Series, X.} where the authorities are
mentioned with a critical estimate of their value.

2 Secret Journals of Congress, Foreign Affairs, Aug. 14, 1779.

3\Vharton, Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revo
lution, V., 851-853.

219

aries — the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Great Lakes,
was finally delimited, and this area, destined to be one
of the richest and most populous sections of our Union,
awaited only the ordinance of four years later to begin
its definite progress in civilization. In reality, however,
the limited geographical knowledge of the time had led
to a minor omission in the limits which was later to
trouble both contracting parties out of all proportion to
its importance. By the terms of the treaty the northern
limit of the United States was to continue due west from
the Lake of the Woods until it reached the Mississippi.
As this river did not extend so far north as the lake, the
boundary was an impossibility, so a gap was left in the
extreme northwestern limit of the new nation and like
wise of the section shortly to become the Northwest
Territory. To remedy this mistake would have seemed
a matter of little difficulty, but later negotiations com
plicated this minor omission with the far more important
issues of the Indian trade, the right to navigate the
Mississippi and subsequently the settlement of the north
ern boundary of the Louisiana purchase, and thus post
poned for thirty-five years the moment for a final diplo
matic settlement of the limits of the Northwest Territory.

In the years following 1783 the Northwest became
not only internationally important, but Indian relations
monopolized almost every point from which its affairs
were viewed. It is true that other questions contributed
to the diplomacy and intrigue of the period and a brief
resume of these will show the possible interest for our
subject.

In the year 1788 occurred the celebrated Spanish
conspiracy which embraced several of the prominent
men of Kentucky. The controlling motive for this
incident was the desire of the Spanish authorities in
Louisiana to check the increasing tide of American mi
gration over the mountains. The Canadian authorities

220

were also alive to the danger from this westward move
ment and embarked in a counter attempt to forestall
their Spanish rivals by sending a half-pay officer to ob
serve this migration. This officer, Conolly, reported
that some of the new colonists settling at the mouth of
the Muskingum were inclined to favor opening a clandes
tine trade with the British at Detroit, and even men
tioned the name of General Parsons of the Marietta
Company as one favoring such a connection.1 Perhaps
the British officer desired to show the importance of his
work and magnified some of the expressions he heard on
his tour; at any rate, we have no direct evidence that
any such connection was actually established. It is pos
sible that British goods intended primarily for the Indian
trade may have ultimately reached these new settlements
on the Ohio. We have evidence that Canadian traders
wished this, but no indications that their wishes were
largely realized. Of more immediate danger, however,
was the complicated plan of Citizen Gent in 1793, for
the invasion of Louisiana and the Floridas from the
Ohio valley.2 This danger was more immediate because
of the fact that French emissaries were all through the
region, while on the northern bank of the Ohio a colony
of disgusted Frenchmen afforded a nucleus for such a
movement. This same restive spirit of filibustering in
trigue continued during the following decade. The
Blount conspiracy awakened some echoes along the Ohio
but attracted no tangible assistance. The various ques
tions associated with the transfer of Louisiana aroused
in turn the resentment or elation of the growing com
munities now springing up on its banks. The famous
Burr conspiracy touched the borders of the same terri
tory, stirred up some officials to unwonted activity, and

1Brymner, Report of the Canadian Archives for i8go, p. 99 ff.
2 The details of this are attractively sketched by Turner in the
Am. Hist. Review, X. p. 249 ff.

221

involved others, especially Senator John Smith of Ohio,
in political ruin.

This catalogue of events will show that the North
west had its general share in the diplomatic intrigue
which existed in the Mississippi valley till after 1815. The
formal treaty of 1783 should have secured the peace and
safety of the Northwest Territory; instead it merely re
opened the old diplomatic controversy of the days of
Louis XV., with the ever present Indian as its most im
portant factor. It is true that the question now had a
new setting. The mother nation, England, was now
arrayed against her recently freed daughter. The former
possessed a series of posts along the Great Lakes, most
of them within limits that had been acknowledged to
belong to the United States. The latter was represented
by the flourishing colony of Kentucky, the western ex
tension of Pennsylvania and Virginia proper, and within
five years had begun to fringe with settlements the
northern bank of the Ohio. Between these straggling
outposts lay the Red Men, divided into two general
groups — the Six Nations, largely beyond the limits of the
Northwest Territory but extending into its northeastern
portion, and the western Algonquin tribes. Both of
these groups were largely under British influence, but
while the Iroquois were inclined to neutrality the West
ern Indians were especially hostile to the Americans
whose widening frontier threatened the early absorption
of the greater part of their hunting grounds. Beyond
the Mississippi, below the mouth of the Missouri were
the weak outposts of impotent Spain, fearing for her
great highway to the Mexican mines, and ready, as the
history of the immediate past showed, to strike a covert
blow at Great Britain or the United States, could she
by so acting check the advance of these dreaded neigh
bors. In addition there existed the distinct menace that
France might ally her robust force with Spain in another

222

attempt to dominate the Mississippi valley. These were
the various elements in the situation during a decade and
a half after 1783, yet the essential factors were the pres
ence of the Indian and the consequent economic interest
of Great Britain in the fur trade. These furnished the
motives for retaining the posts thirteen years; for insist
ing upon commercial privileges with Indians within the
limits of the United States, and for claiming the right to
navigate the Mississippi long after her own explorers had
shown that England was not entitled to that privilege.
In a negative way the fear of the savages covertly sup
ported by British policy, acted as a check upon American
settlements beyond the immediate banks of the Ohio
and gave currency to the natural resentment against
Great Britain.

The three important diplomatic questions between
the United States and Great Britain that involved the
Northwest Territory are; first, the retention of the mili
tary posts along the southern border of the Great Lakes;
second, the Indian trade within the limits of the United
States; and third, the gap in the boundary line in the
extreme northwest which involved the British right
to navigate the Mississippi and the later northern bound
ary of the Louisiana purchase. We will trace each of
these in turn until its final settlement.

The retention of the frontier posts along our north
ern border constituted one of the most weighty charges
of the Americans against the British during this critical
period. The motive alleged by the British government,
some two years after the ratification of the treaty, for
the failure to deliver these posts was the fact that most
of the states of the American union had passed laws inter
fering with loyalists and with the collection of British
debts. This has been very conclusively shown by Pro
fessor McLaughlin1 to have been an afterthought. The

1 Report of the Am. Hist. Ass'n for 1894, p. 413 ff.
223

real motive was to secure the fur trade on the American
side of the Great Lakes and for thirteen years Great
Britain was successful, but at a fearful future cost of
of future distrust and national aversion on the part of
the United States.

But more immediate results followed the retention of
these posts. British officials must exercise a civil juris
diction over contiguous settlements; they must provision
and arm the Indians in order to secure furs from them,
and this regalement meant at least indirect encourage
ment of their hostilities against the Americans, if nothing
worse. Before 1788 the Americans had made treaties
with certain Indian tribes by which they obtained the
grants of land occupied by the settlements at the mouth
of the Muskingum and Scioto and in the Miami dis
tricts.1 Other Indians claimed that these cessions were
illegal because made by a minority of the contracting
tribe or obtained through fraud; and the British agents
openly or tacitly supported them in resisting the validity
of these grants. During the conference between the
representatives of the United States and these Indians,
which resulted in these treaties, and in others held before
1795, British representatives assisted, sometimes through
direct American invitation, and at other times because
the Indians refused to attend unless they were also pres
ent. While it is probable that for the most part they
exercised a restraining influence upon the savages, their
very presence did much to neutralize their spoken coun
sel. Their course immediately before Wayne's campaign
in 1794, however, seems to have been of a more hostile
character. By the indiscreet words of Lord Dorchester
and the froward course of Lieutenant Governor Simcoe
in reoccupying a post on the Maumee, they did much to
encourage the Indians in hostilities against the Ameri
cans, and led to later heated diplomatic correspondence

1The treaties are given in Am. State Papers, Indian Affairs, I.
224

at Philadelphia and in London. Hammond, the British
minister and Randolph the American Secretary of State
were not in a position to obtain much satisfaction from
their mutual charges for they depended upon biased
reports from Dorchester or from Wayne. The general
purport of this correspondence in 1794 was, as the Ameri
cans claimed, that England by taking a new position on
the Maumee had violated the status quo which they
wished to be observed during Jay's negotiation, while
the English claimed that the advance from the Ohio of
a hostile force under Wayne, was likewise a violation of
the same status and their own movement was simply the
reoccupation of a post which had formerly been under
British control. Fortunately a more accommodating
spirit ruled at London, by which Jay and Grenville were
enabled to come to a conclusion which led to the aban
donment of the forts by the British. 1 Thus a prolific
cause of misunderstanding and confusion was removed
from the Northwest. It was now possible for the Ameri
can authorities to deal directly with the Indians, who,
no longer aided by the moral (or perhaps immoral) sup
port of the British, and disheartened by Wayne's victory
at Fallen Timbers, finally signed in 1795, the Treaty of
Greenville, which brought a lull in Indian hostilities in
the Northwest.

Every treaty must in a measure be the result of com
promise and this is illustrated in the case of Jay's cele
brated convention by the clause regulating Indian Trade.
In withdrawing her garrisons from our territory Great
Britain did indeed render partial justice, but the conces
sion was only obtained by our representative's yielding
something of national dignity on this other important
question. Lord Grenville at first suggested that British
traders should have free access to our Indians, and that

1For the diplomatic correspondence dealing with this subject
consult Am. State Papers, Foreign Relations, I.

225

the latter should communicate freely with the British
posts in Canada, without even the payment of a transit
duty. This derogation of sovereign rights and waiving
of revenue was too great a concession and the conferees
finally agreed that such Indian trade should be open to
the subjects of both countries upon the payment at des
ignated ports of entry of duties upon such articles as
remained permanently within the foreign territory; but
goods in transit were not to pay even this nominal
charge. In fact, a decade later, Lieutenant Pike found
that the greater part of the goods introduced into the
Lake Superior region were paying no duties whatever.1

It is obvious that all the advantages of this arrange
ment rested with the British traders. For thirteen years
Great Britain had controlled the available channels of
this trade, by retaining the posts on the Lakes, and now
the influence of her merchants was practically supreme
in the greater part of the Northwest, and this was
equally true of the region above the Missouri, which was
soon to pass into our hands. One result of this condition
of affairs was the ease with which Great Britain attracted
Indian support during the War of 1812, and gained con
trol of the greater part of the present states of Michigan
and Wisconsin. It was not till 1816 that British fur
traders, except when serving as subordinates in American
companies, were excluded from this commerce. Two
years later in the Convention of London, Mr. Rush and
Mr. Gallatin succeeded in avoiding a renewal of the privi
lege of 1794. 2 Thus legal enactment and formal treaty
finally came to the support of American sovereignty in
this respect, but the annals of Governor Cass's adminis
tration of Michigan territory show that the British fur
trade was still a thorn in the flesh of the American offi-

1 Cf. Coues, The Journals of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, I., p.
265 if. "

*Am. State Papers, For. Rel. IV., p. 376 ff.

226

cials as late as the fourth decade of the nineteenth
century.1

A third phase of the Northwestern diplomacy during
this period is concerned with the gap in the boundary
between the Lake of the Woods and the Mississippi. At
first view it would seem that this question is less con
nected with the ever-present Indian problem than the
others already considered, but this is more apparent than
real. In the ensuing discussions upon this omission in
the boundary, the British representatives, contrary to
American claim and the obvious intention of the second
and eighth articles of the Treaty of 1783, claimed that
the subject was closely interwoven with that of the nav
igation of the Mississippi.2 This latter privilege they
(the British) valued chiefly because of the facility it
afforded for carrying on their fur trade, so this subject,
as the others, is one connected with the ever recurrent
Indian problem.

Hardly was the purport of the Preliminary Treaty of
November 1782 known in Canada before members of the
recently formed Northwest Fur Company were petition
ing the Canadian officials to assist them in shutting out
possible American rivals from the Superior region and
beyond. They hoped that the line of the Lake of the
Woods would not be run as planned, for they feared that
this would close their route to the posts beyond Lake
Superior. They spoke of a plan to explore another
water route wholly within the British lines and asked for
a monopoly of such line, if found, for a period of seven
years.3 Although Governor Haldimand could not give
them the monopoly they asked for, he was able to assure
them that the forts on the lakes would not be delivered
to the Americans at present and that American commis-

1McLaughlin, Lewis Cass, p. 112 if.

2 Am. State Papers, For. Rel., I., p. 491 ff.

3Brymner, Report of the Canadian Archives for 1890, p. 48 ff.

227

sioners would not soon be given an opportunity to ex
amine British fur preserves, under pretext of determining
the course of an uncertain boundary. The further
development of this phase of the question has already
been discussed in considering the questions of the posts
and of Indian trade.

Scarcely was the ink dry upon the copy of Mitchell's
map where the British and American commissioners had
traced with heavy line the proposed boundary before the
explorations of Mackenzie and the observations of Thomp
son showed that it was an impossible limit.1 The Miss
issippi did not extend northward to the latitude of the
Lake of the Woods, so a due west line from the latter
would not strike it. Accordingly, it formed one part of
Jay's mission to settle the matter of the extreme north
western boundary.

Early in his correspondence with Lord Grenville,
the Englishman proposed to rectify the mistake by draw
ing a line from the western end of Lake Superior to the
eastern branch of the Mississippi, or else one due north
from the mouth of the St. Croix till it should strike a line
running from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods.
Jay objected to these propositions because they required
a cession of territory by the United States, and also im
plied that the British right to navigate the river rested
upon the fact that the boundary extended to the Missis
sippi when his understanding of the negotiations in 1782 —
and he was one of the commissioners — was that the
navigation was an after-thought inserted because of the
British right by virtue of the treaty of 1763. Grenville
believed that Great Britain could insist upon a direct
line to the Mississippi with as much justice as the Amer
icans upon one due west from the Lake of the Woods;
nevertheless he agreed to Jay's proposition for a joint
survey of the Mississippi river from a point a degree be-

lAm. State Papers, For. Aff., I., p. 473 ff.

228

low the Falls of St. Anthony to its source. This joint
survey was never made. 1

The subject of this limit became important again in
1802, when Madison forwarded to Rufus King, our minis
ter at St. James, instructions relating to the ratification
of this as well as of other points in our northern bound
ary. Mr. King was authorized to accept a line running
from the source of the Mississippi nearest the Lake of
the Woods, thence following the shore of the latter till
it met the line of 1783. Madison thoroughly distrusted
Great Britain and believed that that power wished to
extend her pretentions to include the territory between
the Mississippi and Missouri.2 It was then supposed
that Spain had transferred this region to France, so
about the same time Livingston at Paris also advised
King to agitate the subject of the gap in our boundaries,
but to come to no agreement in the matter- Meanwhile,
he, Livingston, would use the fact that King was nego
tiating with England as a sort of club to force France to
cede to the United States the Louisiana territory above
the Arkansas.3 Thus the minor omission of the Treaty
of 1783 had expanded in Livingston's mind till it in
cluded a large share of the Mississippi valley; but his
fanciful suggestion had no direct bearing upon the solu
tion of the question.

In the instructions and correspondence of this year
the American representatives seem to abandon Jay's
position regarding the navigation of the Mississippi.
Mr. King's convention finally adopted the liberal sugges
tion of Madison, though in reverse order, and began the
line at the northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods,
thence drawing it in the most direct way to the Missis
sippi

p. 497.
i p. 585.

3 State Papers and Correspondence Bearing upon the Purchase
of the Territory of Louisiana, pp. 20-50.

229

Within three days after signing this convention,
King had to report to Lord Hawkesbury an event that
had an important bearing upon it. This was the news of
the cession of Louisiana by France to the United States.
The Louisiana convention bore a date twelve days pre
vious to that negotiated by King, and when the two
papers arrived on the western shore of the Atlantic it
was questionable whether the former did not nullify the
part of the latter relating to the northern boundary.
The committee of the Senate to whom this matter was
referred took this view and reported in favor of ratify
ing Mr King's convention with the exception of the
Fifth Article relating to that limit. * Senator Pickering
of Massachusetts naturally sided with his friend, King,
and opposed the report of the Committee, rendered by its
Chairman, the son of his enemy, John Adams. More
over his zeal led him into a controversy with Jefferson
over the northern boundary of Louisiana and he charged
the President with a policy of duplicity in claiming more
territory in the north than France had previously done. 2
The wishes of the President prevailed over his lukewarm
secretary, and the policy of Adams appealed to the Sen
ate. Thus the doubtful article failed of ratification and
in view of the danger of a possible curtailment of the
Louisiana Purchase in this region, it was well that it did.

In the spring of 1805, at Madrid, Monroe and
Charles Pinckney stated that the United States claimed
the 49th parallel as the northern boundary of Louisiana.
In the course of the same year General Wilkinson sent
Lieutenant Z. M. Pike to explore the sources of the
Mississippi and to assert American sovereignty in the
vicinity against the encroachments of British fur traders.
Pike discovered that the latter were working on the as-

lAm. State Papers, For. Rel., II.; J. Q. Adams, Memoirs, I.,
267 ff.

*SeeJe/erson Papers (Mss.), 2nd Series, Vol. 66, No. 36.

230

sumption that the northwestern gap was to be closed by
a line from the Lake of the Woods to the source of the
Mississippi, at which point the Louisiana boundary was
to begin. Had Mr. King's convention been ratified this
assumption on their part might have been maintained
with the consequent loss by the United States of the
upper part of the Red River Valley and a considerable
fraction of Louisiana.1

In 1806 Monroe and William Pinckney again took up
the subject, with a view of continuing the line to the
Rocky Mountains and in their convention were success
ful in establishing the American contention to the line
of the 49th parallel west of the Lake of the Woods.
The other features of the convention were, however, so
unsatisfactory that Jefferson did not even submit their
work to the Senate for its ratification. Thus the gap
in the boundaries, with the accompanying question of
Mississippi navigation and Louisiana boundary, remained
unsettled when the War of 1812 broke out.

The city of Ghent in the latter part of 1814 became
the next scene for discussing these important points — the
Northwestern boundary and the navigation of the Missis
sippi. At first the British commissioners not only reas-
sumed the position of their government before 1807, but
even proposed that this line should be drawn from Lake
Superior directly to the source of the Mississippi. Their
subjects were also to have free access to that river, to
gether with the right of free navigation to its mouth.
This proposition especially aroused the ire of Henry
Clay, who, as the representative of the West was partic
ularly impressed with the growing importance of that
river in its development. Unfortunately, he found his
chief opponent not on the opposing commission but
among his own colleagues in the person of John Quincy
Adams. The father of the latter had secured in 1783,

lCoues,Journa/s of J. M. Pike, I., 265.
231

the right to engage in the fisheries of the Newfoundland
coast, and now the son was unwilling to abandon his
filial obligation to preserve what his father had won, or
to fail in the support of such a typical New England in
dustry as the cod fishery. For a time the question of
separating these two questions — of the navigation and
the fisheries — threatened to disrupt the American con
tingent and it needed all the tact of Gallatin to avoid
such a result. Finally the British commissioners pro
posed to defer both questions for future negotiation, and
although Clay stated openly that it meant a - - bad
treaty, while Adams recorded his impressions in his diary,
they both signed the convention.1 Three years later
Adams, as Secretary of State, sent to Albert Gallatin
and Richard Rush the instructions to guide them in the
negotiation which finally settled the question. By the
terms of the Convention of London, October 20th, 1818,
the northern boundary of the United States from the
Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains was to be
the 49th parallel, while the rights to navigate the Missis
sippi and to engage in Indian trade within the limits of
the United States was yielded by Great Britain.2 In
view of the future peace of mind of the then Secretary
of State, one is pleased to observe that the fisheries also
were not neglected in this same convention. Thus a
minor error in limits which had expanded into a bound
ary and commercial question of continental magnitude
was happily corrected to the manifest advantage of both
nations.

It remains to mention briefly, as the final word in
the Indian diplomacy of the Old Northwest, certain fea
tures connected with the War of 1812. The broadside

xThe public correspondence is given in Am. State Papers, For.
ReL, III; for details relating to the American negotiators see H.
Adams, Life and Writings of Albert Gallatin', and J. Q. Adams,
Memoirs, III.

2 Am. State Papers, For. Re 1., IV., 395 ff.

232

fired into the "Chesapeake" by the ' 'Leopard" off the
capes of Virginia, had aroused to unwelcome activity the
Canadian officials and they began to prepare for expected
hostilities from the American side. This preparation
included invoking the customary Indian assistance and
among the possible Indian allies we find the significant
names of Tecumseh and "The Prophet." Meanwhile,
in Michigan Governor Hull, and in Indiana Governor
Harrison, were attempting to quiet the minds of the
Indians and to render them neutral in the expected crisis.
Harrison had succeeded, in spite of the repeated opposi
tion of the British traders, and even government officials,
in obtaining several valuable Indian cessions in what is
now Indiana and Illinois. * On the other side the British
authorities were claiming that they had used every effort
to restrain the Indians and had even withheld from them
means of carrying on hostilities. We find some Ameri
can support of this claim in the statement of Rufus Put
nam to Timothy Pickering that Harrison purposely
started the difficulty with the Indians to lend color to
the charge of the American government that they were
stirred up by the British.'2 This statement cannot be
accepted, however, till \ve know more of the personal
motive that dictated this letter. In spite of charges and
countercharges, or possibly as a direct result of them, the
month of November 1811 beheld on the banks of the
Tippecanoe the opening event of the War of 1812, in the
Northwest and as usual the Indian was the most impor
tant factor.

During the first few months of open hostilities the
advantages of the Indian alliance rested wholly with

*For a convenient summary of Harrison's Indian Treaties see
the monograph by Webster and Harrison"1 s Career as Governor of
Indiana Territory, in Indiana Historical Society Publications, Vol.
IV., No. 3.

2 Calendar of Pickering Papers, (Publications of the Mass. Hist.
Society, Series ill.

233

Great Britain. The presence of the savages materially
hastened the surrender of Detroit, the abandonment of
Fort Dearborn and its attendant massacre, the capture
of Fort McKay, within the present state of Wisconsin,
the Raisen River Massacre, and the extension of hostili
ties towards the Ohio. With Perry's victory on Lake
Erie and Harrison's success on the Thames, there came
a turn, however, and on July 16th, 1814, there occurred
the signing of a second Treaty of Greenville by which
the majority of the Indians within the Northwest ac
cepted an American alliance and agreed to take up the
hatchet against their former companions in arms.1
While this fact is not greatly to the credit of the Ameri
can government, it is in keeping with the policy of Jeffer
son as outlined in the instructions of the War Depart
ment to the Governors and Indian agents of Louisiana,
and of Jackson in New Orleans, who was enlisting the
same sort of support among the savages along the Red
River.2 Moreover the unofficial report of Harrison's
action influenced materially the discussion at Ghent con
cerning Indian relations.

It is at Ghent that we meet with the last diplomatic
attempt to make of the Old Northwest an Indian reser
vation. At the first meeting of the commissioners on
August 8th, 18^4, Mr. Ghoulbourn in behalf of his British
colleagues stated that a sine qua non of the negotiations
would be the inclusion of the Indians in the proposed
treaty. A little later he and his commissioners showed
what this proposed inclusion meant. A certain part of
the territory between the Lakes and the Ohio was to be
made into an Indian buffet state, with definite bounds,
under the joint guarantee of the United States and
Great Britain. The more radical London papers had

. State Papers, Ind. Affairs, Vol. II., p. 826 ff.
2 'Jefferson Papers, Series I., Vol. 10; also Indian Office, Letter
Book B. (Mss. Bureau of Indian Affairs.)

234

demanded that the Ohio should form this line and that
Great Britain should resume sovereignty over both sides
of the Lakes. The commissioners stated, however,
that they would accept the line of the Treaty of Green
ville, or even some modification of it. The hundred
thousand or more white inhabitants beyond this line
would, in the language of the British commissioners,
have to shift for themselves. It did not take the Ameri
can commissioners long to reject the proposition, to keep
this territory an Indian desert, or the accompanying pro
posal that the Americans must forbear to arm vessels on
the Lakes or erect fortifications on its shores, and the
British commissioners speedily received instructions to
abandon them after Harrison's Treaty at Greenville.1
The proposal that each side should retain its conquests
was equally rejected and in this the Americans had the
support of no less a character than the great Wellington
himself. Other proposals regarding Indian trade, navi
gation of the Mississippi, and the unadjusted boundary
were equally unacceptable to both groups of commis
sioners, so the treaty finally provided for a mere suspen
sion of hostilities. In the near future, as we have al
ready seen, these questions were settled in keeping with
the best interests of the Northwest.

In this summary of certain diplomatic questions af
fecting the Northwest, two general tendencies are appar
ent. The one is a desire on the part of certain govern
ing factors to keep the region a wilderness for the pur
pose of ease in control and for the development of the
Indian fur trade, — the other to open the country to civil
ization as rapidly as circumstances and pioneer energy
should warrant. It is with sincere pride that one records
the fact that despite a few bungling attempts the efforts
of the American government from the first were in keep
ing with the second of these tendencies, and that in the
end their efforts prevailed.

1 Adams, Memoirs, III., p. 43.

235
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