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CHAPTER XVI

INDIAN RELATIONS AMONG THE LATER PROPRIETARY PROVINCES

The frontier which, before 1690, the colonists of New England were forced to defend was comparatively limited in extent. Pemaquid was its northeastern and Stamford its southwestern extremity; the distance between the two points was about three hundred miles. In their sectional isolation the New Englanders, during that period, were brought into conflict with only a few members of the Algonkin family of tribes. After 1675 New York assumed responsibility, in part at least, for the defence of Pemaquid, and for a time had its share in the conflicts on the extreme eastern frontier. But, notwithstanding the limited extent of the New England frontier, the forces there involved were comparatively vigorous, and by far the greatest Indian war of the seventeenth century was fought in that region.

The frontier in the defence of which the people of the proprietary provinces were concerned stretched from Albany and Schenectady on the north to the borders of Florida on the south. It was nearly one thousand miles in length. As time passed it was destined to become the genuine American frontier, which has steadily receded westward with the advance of civilization. But during the early generations, while settlements were few and sparse and while the proprietary regime was at its height, the attitude of the respective colonies toward this frontier was in most cases narrow and sectional. To the Marylander the native tribes who lived at his doors, or within the borders of his province, and the forests which he inhabited were his almost exclusive concern. The same was true of the other provinces, with the exception to an extent of New York and South Carolina. The

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relations of the former toward the French in Canada and of the latter toward the Spanish in Florida gave them a feeling of greater responsibility for the security of their neighbors than did defence merely against the savages.

Nothing is more evident than that the narrow and sectional views of the colonists toward the question of defence were the natural outgrowth of their economic and social condition. Their numbers were few and scattered. Their resources were very limited. Indian trails, bridle-paths, and the waterways were the only means of communication. News travelled very slowly. Long journeys involved great hardship. Communication except by sea between the colonies of the south and even a port as central as New York was beset with the greatest difficulties. Almost the entire energy of the settler was required to provide for his own needs and those of his family. To work for distant objects was for him an impossibility. The views of the proprietors and of their officials were only slightly broader than those of the colonists themselves. Even their interests were necessarily bound up with their own provinces. Very rarely, if at all, do the instructions of proprietors or their governors contemplate more than local defence. The limited resources of the proprietors precluded thought of contributions on their own part for defence, save from the revenue which the provinces themselves directly yielded. An exception to this statement may, however, be found in occasional small shipments of arms and supplies from England. It is therefore true that the social conditions which existed in the colonies were not favorable to large military enterprises, and that under the system of special chartered jurisdictions little outside official pressure could be brought to bear to change this attitude. But it is also true that no circumstance at that time tended so strongly to draw those small communities out of their isolation and to force them to cooperate as did the necessities of defence which arose along this frontier.

The inhabitants of the proprietary provinces were brought into contact with the three great Indian stocks which occupied the country east of the Mississippi river. The Algonkin family of tribes comprised, in addition to the Indians of

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New England, the Mohegans and other lesser tribes on the Hudson river, the Lenâpe or Delawares of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, the Minisinks who inhabited the mountains along the upper course of the Delaware river; the Pascataways, Nanticokes, Powhatans, and other neighboring tribes of Maryland and Virginia. The territory of the Iroquois confederacy extended from the upper Hudson to the Genesee, while the Susquehannas of the lower Susquehanna valley and the Tuscaroras of North Carolina belonged to the same stock. The testimony of language is to the effect that the Cherokees were also of Iroquois-Huron descent. The third large group of tribes, the Maskokis, comprised the Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, Yemassees, Seminoles of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and much of the region which extended westward to and beyond the Mississippi.¹

From the nature of the case, intercourse with the Indians was subject to much the same regulations in all the colonies. As in New England, so in the proprietary provinces, both north and south, the law required that the Indians should receive some form of compensation for their interest in the land. In order to insure this and also to secure to the proprietor his exclusive right to the land and to the revenue which came from it, this was accompanied by the further requirement that so-called purchases should be made only by the provincial authorities themselves, or under their license. Dutch law was especially clear on both these points. It both enjoined payment for lands and forbade purchase otherwise than under authority of the company. The principle was set forth in the Freedoms and Exemptions of 1629, and by special ordinances in 1652 and 1654.² In the proposed Maryland legislation of 1639, the procuring or holding of and by virtue of an Indian grant was forbidden, and this very properly formed part of a bill which was intended

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to secure to the proprietor his title in the land of the province.¹ By positive legislation, in 1649, the purchasing of lands from any who did not hold of the proprietor, unless it were with his consent, was forbidden. This was expressly directed against unlicensed purchases of land from the Indians. But it does not appear that in Maryland the law required that land should be procured from the natives exclusively under form of purchase. In Section 102 of the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, all persons were forbidden to hold or claim land by purchase or grant in any form from the natives, or from any one except the proprietors, on penalty of fine or of the forfeiture of their entire estate. This is understood to have operated,² until 1675, as a prohibition of purchases of land from the Indians in the southern part of the province. Then, under the initiative of the Earl of Shaftesbury, the policy of rewarding the natives for their concessions was adopted, and it was followed with much consistency thereafter.

In the Duke’s Laws the implication is that the policy of the Dutch in the extinguishment of Indian claims should be followed,³ while among the towns of eastern Long Island New England traditions prevailed in this as in other matters. The proprietors of New Jersey and of East Jersey enforced the same principles in their instructions.⁴ In the Concessions and Agreements of West Jersey, as well as by legislation, commissioners were empowered to procure concessions from the Indians for tracts of land when they were needed for settlement. There is evidence that on the Delaware the practice of buying out Indian claims was regularly followed between the period of the English conquest and that of the settlement of Pennsylvania.⁵ William Penn entertained feelings toward the Indians similar to those of Roger Williams, though he did not wholly share Williams’s notions concerning their rights to land. He regarded the extinguishment

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of the Indian claim as an act of justice. By a series of treaties, beginning with that concluded by Markham in July, 1682,¹ for a tract of land between Delaware river and Neshaminy creek, purchases of land were peacefully made as it was needed for settlement. Individuals were forbidden to buy land of the natives without the permission of the governor.² The chief cause of conflict with the Indians was without doubt the jealousy that was occasioned by the steady encroachment of whites on their hunting grounds. Though the principle of action set forth in the laws of the Dutch and Quaker colonies was far from being uniformly observed, yet its frank recognition, especially in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, undoubtedly contributed toward the peaceful relations which very generally existed between the whites and the natives in those provinces.

The next most prolific source of trouble with the Indians was the sale to them of arms, ammunition, and spirituous liquors. The principle of action as set forth in the laws on this subject was even more uniform than that which related to the purchase of land. In 1639 the director and council of New Netherland forbade the sale of guns, powder, or lead to the Indians, under penalty of death. In 1645, and again in 1648, this ordinance was renewed.³ But in reality no attempt was ever made to execute these ordinances, except in the southern part of the province and against the Algonkin tribes of that region. The inhabitants of Rensselaerswyck, and afterwards free traders from Holland, acting independently of the director and his officials, supplied the Mohawks with guns and ammunition at most profitable rates. In the early days the Mohawks are said to have readily given twenty beavers for a gun and the equivalent of ten or twelve guilders for a pound of powder.⁴ Traffic on such terms was too profitable to be ignored, and from the stores which were imported by the traders the Mohawks were soon furnished with arms. The other tribes of the confederacy were gradually supplied through the same channel. It was naturally

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a source of irritation to the river Indians that the sale of arms to them was prohibited.

A long series of ordinances was also issued by the Dutch against the sale of liquors to the Indians, the penalty being increased until it reached a fine of five hundred guilders,¹ corporal punishment, and banishment. Special orders were also passed for the South river and Rensselaerswyck. But the government repeatedly confessed that the sale of liquors went on in spite of its prohibitions.

When the Indian war broke out, in 1643, the natives were well supplied with arms and ammunition, which they were known to have procured from private traders. In 1650 the company admitted that the sale of munitions of war to the Indians went on to a considerable extent, that it was concealed from the officers of the company, and yielded a large profit to the small traders.² The year before, the company itself had permitted the director to supply Indians sparingly with powder, lead, and guns. Intoxication also became so common among the natives that ordinances were issued for the protection of communities against the outrages of drunken Indians. The testimony of Indians concerning those who furnished them with liquor was made admissible³ before the courts.

Some vigorous administrative measures were also occasionally adopted. We have the record of the removal from the province, in 1655, of Sonder Toursen and his wife for selling liquor to an Indian. Soon after a similar decree was issued against Jan Dircksen and wife, but this, for apparently good reasons, was softened into a reprimand. Both the parties then under accusation were residents of New Amsterdam. In a conference between certain Mohawk chiefs and the magistrates at Fort Orange, in 1659, reference was made to the sale of brandy to the Iroquois during all the past years of their intercourse with the Dutch. “Eighteen years

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ago,” said the Dutch, “you requested us not to sell brandy to your people. . . . Brothers, do not allow your people to come to us for brandy, none shall be sold to them; but only two days ago we have met 20 or 30 little kegs on the road, all going to obtain brandy; our chiefs are very angry because the Dutch sell brandy to your people, and always forbid it to our people; and if you desire us to take away from your people the brandy and the kegs, say so now before all these people.¹ . . . The only declaration which we have from the natives was that, when they went away this time they would take a great deal of brandy with them; but after that no more. They would burn their kegs. The kegs were burned and brandy drinking stopped only when the natives were exterminated, or the peltries on which they trafficked and the assistance which they could give in war ceased to be objects of competition on the part of the whites.

Several of the Hackensack Indians complained, in 1662, that selfish people not only sold brandy to savages in New Amsterdam, but carried whole ankers of it into their country and peddled it out there. The director and council, conscious of their inability to cope with the traffic or unwilling to attempt it, authorized two of the chiefs to seize the liquor and any who sold it, and present the offenders for punishment. The repeated Indian outbreaks at Esopus were admittedly due in part to drink. Full accounts of the extent of the evil at that place are extant. In 1663 the local magistrates appealed to the director for assistance in suppressing the traffic.² Among the colonists at large the Dutch gained an evil reputation from their indulgence in the traffic; but the English traders almost everywhere were quite ready on occasion to imitate their example.

In Maryland the law always required that trade with the natives should be carried on exclusively under licenses from the proprietor. In that province the point was emphasized specially for the reason that Claiborne had prior rights to trade within the grant, which it was the desire of the colonists to break down. The insistence upon licenses, viewed in

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one aspect, was an incident of the struggle with Claiborne.¹ Not until 1654 do we find the sale of arms and ammunition to the Indians forbidden by the statutes, though at intervals, beginning more than ten years earlier, instructions were issued against that traffic.² In Maryland, as in the other colonies, when Indian hostilities had been experienced or were feared, savages who came within the settlements were disarmed, or they were ordered to be entirely excluded except when they came for the purpose of concluding a treaty.³ An attitude similar to this had been adopted in Virginia after the massacre of 1622, and later in that province a system of passports had been instituted.⁴ In 1643 by proclamation of the governor of Maryland the sale of arms and ammunition to the savages was prohibited.⁵

At all times, however, it was difficult, if not impossible, to exclude Indians from the settlements. Especially was this true where detached farms existed, or straggling hamlets grew up which were not properly stockaded. During the years when a settlement or colony was wreak and not yet self-supporting, the visits of the Indians with supplies of food were welcome. Their assistance in hunting or fishing, or when tillage began, was valuable. The early settlers at Ashley river shared these experiences with colonists at an earlier date at Jamestown, Plymouth, and elsewhere. In September, 1670, William Owen wrote to Lord Ashley, “They [the neighboring Indians] have exprest us unexpected kindness, for when the ship went to and dureing her stay att Virginia, provision was att the scarcest with us, yet they daylie supplied us, that we were better stored att her return than when she went, having 25 days provision in store beside 3 tunn of corn more, which they promised to procure when we pleased to come for it att Seweh.”⁶ The

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natives are also credited with supplying deer, fish, and fowl in abundance to the early South Carolina settlers. But before the English appeared on that coast the natives had become acquainted through the Spanish with the existence of firearms, though they probably possessed but few. At the time of settlement the Westoes, and other Indians from the remoter south, acting under Spanish direction, used firearms in their attacks on the English and their Indian allies. But in 1672 we find the council proposing the passage of an act to forbid the selling or disposing of arms or ammunition to the Indians.¹

Until 1677 trade with the Indians in the southern part of Carolina had been left by the proprietors mainly in the hands of the colonists and the local authorities. On that date the proprietary board² resolved that, for a space of seven years, it would take into its hands the entire trade with the Westoes, Cussatoes, and the other tribes which lived somewhat remote from the mouth of Ashley river. To the settlers was left the trade within approximately one hundred miles of the plantation. It is not, however, probable that important changes of system or abatement of abuses which may already have arisen resulted from this step. How far a system of licenses was enforced it is impossible to state. Comprehensive acts on Indian trade which were passed at intervals between 1691 and the close of the proprietary period in South Carolina repeated the prohibition of the sale of spirituous liquors to the remoter tribes. The sale of arms and ammunition to hostile tribes was also forbidden. Indians who lived within the three settled counties were kept strictly under control, while trade with the remoter tribes was regulated by a system of licenses. But abuses continued, some of them doubtless proceeding from traders who came from Virginia and North Carolina. Among the complaints which preceded the outbreak of the Yemassee war that of the sale of intoxicants appears. With it went fraud in the purchase of skins, the seizure of land, various acts of immorality, and personal offences.

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By the Duke’s Laws the sale of liquors to Indians, save to the extent of two drams in case of sickness, was forbidden. The sale to them of firearms and ammunition without a license, or the repair of their arms, was prohibited. But there is evidence that license was sometimes granted to sell such liquors to the Indians as they might need. In March, 1667, such a license was granted to William Wells, the high sheriff of Yorkshire.¹ Except in times of unusual danger, the sale of powder and arms to the Indians in New York was permitted. This was everywhere a natural condition of the success of the fur trade. As in Maryland in the time of Governor Stone, Indians were furnished with guns that they might kill deer, so Long Island Indians with firearms were frequently employed in the whaling industry.² Even in September, 1675, when Philip’s war was threatening to extend itself to Long Island, the council at New York resolved that the sale of powder to the Indians should not be prohibited, but regulated as formerly and according to law. During the same crisis, however, the arms of a part of the Indians on Long Island were repeatedly taken from them, and the peril seemed so great at the beginning of 1676 that a general disarmament in that section was ordered.³ In October, 1675, the sale at Albany of powder and lead to any except the Five Nations was forbidden.⁴ Whenever in time of war Indians were taken into active alliance, they were of course furnished, so far as possible, with guns, powder, and lead. But such coöperation was not common till after the beginning of the war with the French.

In East Jersey, under Berkeley and Carteret, the same acts were prohibited and offenders were threatened with heavy fines. The sale of liquors to the Indians was prohibited by a law of 1677, as well as by one passed in 1682, under the twenty-four proprietors. Fines were to be levied on those who sold liquor, or on the party from whose premises the Indian came in a state of intoxication, unless it could be proven

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that the liquor was not procured there. The only act¹ which expressed the sentiments felt by the West Jersey legislators respecting this traffic contained the usual prohibition, qualified in substantially the same fashion as it was in the law of New York. The sale of intoxicants to Indians was forbidden in the early laws of Pennsylvania under penalty of £5,² but the evil certainly prevailed there, as it did in all the other colonies. The laws of Pennsylvania naturally make no reference to the sale of munitions of war.

The legislation of New England makes considerable reference to the irritation caused between the two races by the destruction of their crops and by various forms of trespass. The cattle of the English broke down the fences of the Indians and trampled upon their corn-fields. The Indians, by way of reprisal, levelled the fences and destroyed the growing crops of the English. In New Netherland, in 1640, an ordinance was issued forbidding trespasses on the maize lands of the Indians, and requiring that damages caused in this way should be made good by the whites. But the evil did not cease, and it is given as one of the causes of the war which broke out a few years later.³ The Duke’s Laws, borrowed as they were largely from the New England codes, required that cattle should everywhere be kept from destroying the Indian’s corn, and, if injury was inflicted through the fault of the English, damages should be paid. The English should also assist the Indians in the building of their fences. All damages which were due to the Indians should be assessed and recovered in English courts. An act of 1683 in Pennsylvania provided for the trial of cases of trespass by Indians before a mixed jury of natives and white men,⁴ but it is probable that the law remained a dead letter. Of this phase of Indian relations we find very little in the laws or administrative records of the provinces farther south. Stray cattle roaming the woods were sometimes killed by the Indians, and in Maryland, in 1662, this occasioned

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legislation.¹ In 1686 complaints of trespass, both by the Indians and English, in settlements on the eastern shore were heard and adjusted by the council of Maryland.² In Virginia, after 1660, colonists were required to assist the Indians in building fences, and damages could be collected by the natives from trespassers or from those who molested them in their lawful pursuits.

When irritation between natives and the whites reached the point where the former began to commit murders and other outrages, steps were taken to exclude them wholly from the settlements of the colonists. Strict regulations of this nature were adopted in Virginia after the massacre of 1622. In New Netherland, after the Indian raid of 1655, orders were issued forbidding the entertainment of Indians over night on any part of Manhattan island south of the “fresh water,” and directing that armed Indians should be excluded from villages and hamlets throughout the province.³ Fear of Indian attack caused the governor of Maryland, in 1641, to issue an order forbidding any one to harbor or entertain a savage.⁴ The commission of certain murders by the Indians occasioned the passage of an act by the Maryland legislature, in 1650, excluding them from Kent and Anne Arundel counties, unless they came expressly to speak with the commanders of the counties.⁵ Though express legislation of this nature does not appear in any of the proprietary provinces after the Restoration, the colonists always held themselves ready to resort to such measures when danger necessitated it. By treaty, in 1668 and again in 1687, the Nanticokes of Maryland were forbidden to enter any plantation without warning and until after they had laid down their arms.

In the later proprietary provinces only slight efforts were made in the seventeenth century to convert the Indians to Christianity. The declarations of the charters respecting

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this matter proved to be empty words. The ambitious plans which had been cherished in the London company for their conversion and education in Virginia did not survive the massacre. In their place for a time appeared the stern resolve to exterminate the savages in the colony, if it were possible. Ever after the Virginians held them, as it were, at arm’s length. The Dutch in earlier years lived as familiarly with the natives as did the first settlers of Virginia. Indeed, their great familiarity with them was assigned as an occasion of the war of 1643. But the Dutch never undertook to Christianize them.¹ The company declared, in 1650, that every one who was conversant with the Indians in and about New Netherland would say that it was morally impossible to convert the adults among them to the Christian faith. In 1657 the two clergymen of the Dutch Church in New Amsterdam, in a formal report² on the state of the churches of New Netherland, wrote, “Of the conversion of Heathens or Indians here, we can say but little, nor do we see any means thereunto until by the numbers and power of our nation they are subdued and brought under some policy, and our people show them a better example than they have hitherto done.”

The enthusiasm of the Jesuit and the devotion of the Puritan were the only forces which in the seventeenth century were equal to the task of missionary work among the native Americans. Andrew White, John Altham, and their associates, under the protection of Cecilius Calvert, after celebrating mass and planting the cross on St. Clement’s island, addressed themselves, not only to the conversion of their Protestant fellow-colonists, but to active missionary work among the neighboring Indian tribes.³ Until the rebellion of Claiborne and Ingle, in 1645, they labored without molestation among the Patuxents, Pascataways, and other smaller tribes, who, to escape the scourgings of the Susquehannas, willingly sought the protection of the colonists

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who settled in their midst. Employing the same methods as were used by their brethren in Canada, each priest, accompanied if possible by an interpreter and a servant, took up his residence in some Indian village. There, while acquiring the language as rapidly as possible, he ministered to the sick, said mass, preached, taught and catechised young and old who would come to hear him, baptized converts, and performed the last rites over the dying. The superstitions of the natives were appealed to; miraculous cures and other indications of special divine favor toward the missionaries and their work were skilfully utilized. The utmost devotion and self-sacrifice were exhibited. When the Indians suffered from famine, the priests labored for their relief. Much encouragement was felt at the conversion of Chitomachen, a Pascataway chief, who had been restored from illness by the ministration of the father. This chief put away all his wives except one, and with her submitted to the sacraments of Christian baptism and marriage. Christian names were given to these and others. “The governor was present at the ceremony, together with his secretary and many others; nor was anything wanting in display which our means could supply.”

Before the band of Puritans entered to destroy this work, the Catholic missionaries had proclaimed their faith along the shore of the Chesapeake from Saint Mary’s to Kent island, and up the Potomac nearly to the site of the modern city of Washington. The number of priests in the mission varied from three to four; and they had one or more assistants. After the storm which broke up the mission and dispersed the priests had somewhat abated, new laborers appeared, and the work was tentatively resumed on a small scale. But Maryland was no longer a Catholic province, and the hopeful period of its missions had forever passed away. Upon the Indians, except in strengthening their tendency toward submission to English control, the effect was too small to be traced.

The only other exhibition of missionary zeal within the proprietary provinces during this period was at the eastern end of Long Island, and subsequent to 1660. This was

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simply an extension of the missionary efforts of the Puritan leaders of New England. The Rev. Thomas James of Easthampton, sharing the spirit of Eliot, Mayhew, and Fitch, started a local missionary enterprise. He, in part at least, mastered the language of the Montauks, held meetings among them, and prepared a catechism with select passages of Scripture for their use. Governor Lovelace was interested in the experiment, and promised to have the catechism printed. He also agreed that as soon as possible he would relieve Mr. James from his regular charge, so that he could devote all his time to missionary work.¹

Though the Indians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania were eminently peaceful and accessible, no serious effort was made to Christianize them till the period of Moravian activity in the eighteenth century. The Rev. Thomas Campanius, the Lutheran pastor in New Sweden from 1642 to 1649, attempted to learn the Lenâpe dialect, and translated a catechism into that tongue. But his efforts were followed by no conversions. Among the Quakers Penn himself was almost the only individual who was ready to promote efforts to civilize and Christianize the natives. In 1699 he offered to provide the Friends’ Meeting at Philadelphia with interpreters to aid in the work of teaching the natives; but this offer awakened no response. In 1701 Penn and John Richardson attempted through interpreters to address the Indians on religious subjects, but their efforts were not continued and hence were without result. Notwithstanding their strong religious spirit, the Quakers were indifferent on this point.²

In all the provinces and over small groups of the natives who lived adjacent to the settlements of the Europeans, the rights of a protectorate, varying in extent and details, were gradually assumed. The tracts of land which were left in the possession of the savages after the whites had occupied, or at least surveyed, all the rest of their former hunting grounds, were treated as reservations. The Indians were secured in the possession of these tracts, nominally forever,

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but really until they were needed by the white man. As they were gradually surrounded by the advancing settlements of the whites, the Indians, who were steadily diminishing in numbers, were confined more and more strictly to their reservations. The surrender of his original nomadic freedom was the sacrifice which the Indian was forced to make in order that he might be “protected.” The “protection” which he enjoyed consisted in the guaranty of the reserved land, where by hunting, fishing, or by rude agriculture he might still subsist; the assurance that against trespassers, or those who committed worse offences, he might have, not the blood feud, but European justice, a hearing in the courts of the English; in return for skins or wampum he might receive supplies of arms and ammunition for use in hunting or against savage foes who came against him from the remoter wilderness. In cases of peculiar peril he could rely on the armed intervention of the colonists. In return for the peltries which they had to sell, the Indians received the cloths and other paltry wares—not forgetting liquors— which the whites were ready to bestow. Among the Indians of the coast districts, however, where relations of the nature of a protectorate chiefly developed, resources for trade were very slight.

The existence of the protectorate within the later proprietary provinces appears most clearly in the case of some of the tribes of southern Maryland, and in its development the Jesuit may be considered as having a share. The earliest proofs of the submission and peaceful attitude of the Patuxent and Pascataway Indians are furnished by the Relation of Father White. Exposed as they were to the attacks of the Susquehannas from the north, they welcomed the advent of the English. As early as January, 1640, Governor Calvert proclaimed¹ the fact that he had taken the Patuxent Indians under the protection of the province, and all Englishmen were forbidden to offer them any injury whatever. When sending Henry Fleet, in 1644, to avert, if possible, by treaty a threatened attack of the Susquehannas, Calvert instructed him to urge them to open their country to settlement, for

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then the English would live among them and aid them against their enemies, “as now we doe the Pascataways etc.”¹ Soldiers were sent for the protection of the Pascataways when they were in danger. In 1625 the Susquehannas surrendered to the English their land south of the head of Chesapeake bay, but no relation beyond that of alliance appears in any of the treaties with them. In 1659 Governor Fendall concluded a treaty with various tribes on the eastern shore, by which their lands were thrown open for settlement, and provision was made that these Indians should submit any wrongs which they suffered at the hands of the colonists to certain designated English officials.²

The Nanticoke tribe on the eastern shore held out against the English, and hostile relations with them prevailed at intervals until after 1660. By treaty, in 1668, however, the process of their humiliation began. Their chief was then forbidden to conclude any new treaty of peace with the enemies of the province, or to make war without the consent of the proprietor or his governor. This agreement was violated during the disturbed period of Bacon’s rebellion, and, in 1678, the same obligation was again imposed by treaty.³ Shortly after it was required of other tribes who lived further south on the eastern shore. As an incident of the protection which was extended over the Pascataways, by virtue of an act of assembly in 1666, which was renewed in 1670, they were offered in 1668 a tract of land on the west shore as a place of permanent abode, and further settlement within the tract by whites was prohibited. In consequence of danger of attack from the Senecas and Susquehannas, in 1680, the governor and council designated the Nanticoke river as the place where the Pascataways might take refuge from their enemies.⁴

In the two border provinces, South Carolina and New York, special commissions were created for the management of Indian affairs. In the other provinces these concerns

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received in all cases the immediate attention of the governor and council. In South Carolina the systematic regulation of Indian trade began with the act of 1691,¹ which was passed during the administration of Sothell. Its object was to so regulate intercourse with the Savannahs, Yemassees, and other tribes which lay outside the limits of Berkeley, Craven, and Colleton counties as to prevent the sale of arms, ammunition, and spirits there, and to insure, if possible, the conduct of trade henceforth in these regions by bands of traders sent out at definite periods. Over the Indians who lived within the settled parts of the province the attempt was made to exercise a rather strict control. In 1695² the governor and one member of the council were designated to settle all controversies between Indian and Indian, or Indian and white man, within that region. The natives were also required to deliver yearly to receivers appointed for the purpose the skin of at least one animal they had slain. For all skins in excess of this they were paid.

No further important legislation was passed on the subject until 1707, when, in connection with a renewed prohibition of the sale of spirituous liquors to Indians and of arms and ammunition to hostile natives, traders, except those who dealt with the neighboring tribes already referred to, were required to purchase licenses. A commission was created by this act, to which was intrusted the granting of such licenses and the exclusive management of trade with the Indians. A resident and salaried Indian agent was also designated in the act, who was given the powers of a justice of the peace, with authority also to settle disputes among the traders and Indians, subject in the more important cases to appeal to the commissioners. He had the right to employ interpreters, and was bound by oath to obey the instructions of the commissioners and not to engage in Indian trade. Indian traders who committed indictable offences were to be sent to Charlestown for trial and punishment. In 1711 traders from other provinces were also brought under the obligation to procure licenses, and were made subject to the other

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regulations under which traffic with the Indians in South Carolina was carried on.¹ Under this well-devised system Indian trade was conducted as long as proprietary government continued in South Carolina. In 1716 it was further developed by the bestowment of authority on the commissioners to appoint several agents and factors, and to establish trading posts at three several points in the outlying country. Special powers were also given them to be used in the detection of illicit trading. From this time the commissioners were required to keep a journal of their proceedings.

In New York, during the administration of Nicolls and Lovelace, a board of commissioners for Indian affairs at the eastern end of Long Island was in existence. It was created by Nicolls, but does not reappear after the accession of Andros to the government. Occasional traces of its activity remain. From the letters of Governor Lovelace it appears that the board, of which Thomas Mulford and other residents of the locality were members, was created as an expedient “to keep the Indians in some Order and Decorum.” It was concerned in the adjustment of boundary disputes between the Indians and the English. The relations between the Long Island Indians and the Niantics of Connecticut came before it. The commissioners were also instructed to facilitate, as far as possible, the missionary efforts of Rev. Thomas James of Easthampton among the Indians. In the exercise of their functions they assumed quasi-judicial powers, so that in 1672 some of the inhabitants complained that the commissioners were acting too much like justices of the peace.²

But a board, whose work was to be of far greater importance, was established at Albany in 1675.³ With the opening of relations between the English and the Five Nations after the

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close of the Dutch reoccupation, Governor Andros designated certain of the magistrates at Albany to act as a special commission for Indian affairs. Robert Livingston was its first secretary. The activity of this board in all matters which related to the Five Nations, and incidentally to relations with the French along the New York frontier, continued without interruption until near the close of the colonial period. Its location made it the most important body of its kind which existed in any of the colonies.

Having outlined the policy which each province pursued toward the Indians who lived within the borders, attention must now be directed toward Indian policy in its broader relations, to tendencies and movements which affected the western frontier as a whole. These were determined in part by the relations which existed among the Indians themselves, and in part by those which developed between the natives and the whites. Among the natives the chief fact in the situation was the state of permanent hostility between the Five Nations and the tribes which lay to the east and south of them. The Mohegans of the Hudson valley, the Lenâpes and Delawares of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, were their immediate antagonists. Long and bloody wars occurred, particularly between the Senecas and the Minsis of the upper Delaware, who were a tribal division of the Lenâpe nation. During the period when these wars were in progress the Five Nations were also destroying the Hurons, the Fries, the Andastes, and were bringing the Illinois into subjection. Their raids, while extending to the Mississippi on the west, were also frequently directed against the Catawbas and other neighboring tribes of the Carolinas. Against those who would neither form an alliance nor enter the confederacy, especially if they were of Iroquois blood, the arms of the Men of the Long House were almost sure to be directed in an implacable feud. Though the extent of Iroquois domination and their alleged superiority to other Indians have probably been exaggerated,¹ they possessed some elements of decided leadership. Partly by good fortune they had occupied

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a central position, and one from which unusually liberal supplies of food were procurable. Their confederacy, though loose, insured the maintenance of peace and a certain amount of coöperation among the tribes that composed it. But of decisive importance was the fact already referred to, that by the Dutch they had been supplied with firearms in advance of most of the tribes with which they had come in conflict. These facts, when taken in connection with the considerable mental endowment of the Iroquois, sufficiently explain the triumphs which they won.

The relations between the savages and the whites along the entire stretch of frontier, while in most instances friendly during the early years of settlement, became more hostile as years advanced. In the provinces which were under Quaker government the term of peaceful relations was greatly prolonged. But even in them, where Indians existed in large numbers, and when other ideas than those of the Quaker came to prevail, the customary hostile relations developed. As the Europeans came first in contact with the Algonkin people of the coast region, those tribes had to sustain the earliest shock of the conflict. In New Netherland it came, as has been already related, during the years between 1643 and 1664. At intervals during those two decades the Mohegans of Long Island and the Hudson valley threw themselves on the Dutch and English settlements of the region. Repeatedly, though with difficulty, they were beaten back and forced into submission. The clans of the middle Hudson held out till almost the very close of Dutch rule, when they too became peaceful neighbors. The peaceful attitude of the Indians of southern New York while Philip’s war was in progress in New England furnished decisive proof that the natives of that region felt themselves too weak again to attempt armed resistance against the Europeans. The peaceful, but no less certain, process of elimination could be left to do the rest.

On the upper Hudson and along the remoter stretches of the frontier between the Mohawk valley and the lower Susquehanna, the relations were somewhat different; and these relations, as we have noticed, affected also the Indians

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who lived on the upper courses of the streams of Virginia and the Carolinas. The assumption by Champlain of the cause of the Hurons in their feud with the Five Nations opened a conflict between the latter and New France which was to last as long as the French power continued on the waters of the Saint Lawrence. This conflict made the guns and ammunition which the Dutch—though they nominally maintained neutrality—were able to furnish, doubly valuable to the Iroquois. Assistance of this kind helped to strengthen the friendly relations which now grew up between the two parties. Beginning certainly as early as 1659,¹ and probably some years earlier, Fort Orange became a centre for negotiation with the Mohawks and the other tribes of the League. The Mohawks, when first the records of conferences begin, were begging arms and powder from the Dutch, were urging that smiths might be sent to repair their arms and assistance be furnished in building palisades and fortifying their castles. The guns which were sold to them by the Dutch, they used not only against the French, but against the river Indians and their other savage foes as well. It is not improbable that the apparent superiority of the Iroquois to the river Indians was largely due to this cause.

At all events, the fear of the Mohawk and Seneca was spread far and wide, and was felt almost as strongly along the borders of Maryland and Virginia as elsewhere. By oft-repeated raids down the Susquehanna valley they drove the related people of that name in upon the English settlements or reached the outlying posts themselves. For a long period subsequent to 1660 this was the principal cause of Indian disturbances in the colonies about the Potomac. It contributed greatly, as we know, to the origin of Bacon’s rebellion. It compelled the English, as we have seen, to take native tribes under their protection and to expend heavily from their resources on armed expeditions and other defensive measures. But it led also to the beginning of a comprehensive Indian policy, which was intended through the coöperation of a number of provinces to secure the peace of the

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entire northern and middle frontier. As disturbances of the peace came chiefly from the raids of the Iroquois, appeals, were made to the government of New York to permit agents or commissioners from Virginia and Maryland to negotiate with the Five Nations at Albany, and to use its own influence as well for the restoration of captives and the maintenance of peace. It was these events and causes which made Albany the chief centre among all the English colonies north of the Carolinas for negotiation with the Indians. At the same point inevitably centred many of the lines of influence which guided French, English, and Iroquois politics. This gave to the Indian commissioners of northern New York and to the interpreters who were in their service an importance the extent of which has already been indicated.

Maryland took the initiative in the despatch of agents to negotiate at Albany. In 1677,¹ as a result of the widely extended movements among the Indians which had contributed so much to occasion Bacon’s rebellion in Virginia, Henry Coursey, a member of the council of Maryland, and one who was already conversant with Indian affairs, was sent to Albany as special commissioner. He was instructed to apply to Governor Andros for assistance in his business, and in return for his courtesies to make him a present of £100 sterling on behalf of the province of Maryland. On the way and after his arrival he was to inform himself as thoroughly as possible concerning the relations, particularly between the Senecas and the Susquehannas. As the custom had already arisen of making presents to the Indians when conferences were held, Coursey was to ascertain what presents the governor of New York made on such occasions. He was of course compelled to rely upon the authorities at Albany to summon the Indians to the conference. When he met them Coursey was to secure from the Five Nations and also from the Susquehannas, if there was such a distinct tribe, a treaty of peace, and this should include, not only the

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English in Maryland, but the Indians who were under their protection. If possible, he was also to open trade relations between the Five Nations and Maryland.

The conference was held in August. Chiefs from each of the tribes of the Iroquois confederacy were present. The usual gifts were exchanged, and speeches expressive of friendship and of a resolve to forget past injuries were made on both sides. The Indians expressed the desire—whatever it was worth—that the agreement which they were forming with Maryland might be as firm as the covenant with the governor of New York. Colonel Coursey found no difficulty in securing from the natives such promises, and expressions of fidelity to the same, as were held to constitute an Indian treaty.

But war parties which were out when the conference was held captured some prisoners from the Indian allies of the English, while some reprisals occurred on the Virginia border. These events soon necessitated the direct interposition of Governor Andros to secure a return of prisoners. In 1679 Virginia sent two agents to Albany, who addressed their complaints to the Indians, but without effective results save in the case of the Mohawks. Indian outrages continuing, in 1682 the governor of Maryland, after consulting the assembly, sent Coursey and Lloyd to Albany.¹ By this time the Maryland authorities had become considerably aroused in view of the fact, as it seemed to them, that New York was carefully maintaining peace and alliance with Indians who were murdering the inhabitants of other English colonies. New York was also selling the guns with which, very likely, the Indians were committing these murders. Against these conditions the agents protested rather strongly in their correspondence with Lieutenant-Governor Brockholls. They insisted that New York should prohibit trade with the Five Nations, should assist in forcing them to recall war parties which were still supposed to be out to the southward, and should join, if necessary, in offensive operations in behalf of the other colonies. In this correspondence we first

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hear it stated that defence against the Indian was a common cause, affecting the interests of all the colonies alike. It was even intimated that it might be necessary to appeal to the crown to enforce these views. To this doctrine New York was not yet ready to assent. Both the governor and the commissioners at Albany refused to break off peaceful relations with the Five Nations or to cease trading with them, even in munitions of war. Since the danger proved to be less than the Marylanders feared, and after they had obtained a renewal of peace on favorable terms, Coursey and Lloyd returned home.¹ The desire was at this time expressed by the Maryland government that Newcastle on the Delaware, or some other town in that region, might be the place where future conferences with the Indians should be held, but it was too remote from the centre of activity to be used for such a purpose.

The following year, in 1684, Lord Howard of Effingham, governor of Virginia, visited New York, and, with Governor Dongan, held a conference with the Five Nations at Albany. He demanded that all the Iroquois should be recalled from Virginia and Maryland, and that the Indians of those provinces should not be molested when they hunted on the mountains to the west and northwest. The Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas, who had been the offending tribes, were induced by the Mohawks to accede to these demands. Each of the three tribes then joined with Lord Howard in the ceremony of burying the hatchet. This was the most notable of the early series of conferences held at Albany in which officials from the southern provinces participated. But since lawless and unrestrained bands of young Iroquois warriors still continued to haunt the southern frontier, in 1685, and again in 1687, envoys from Virginia appeared in New York to secure additional assurances of peace.² It proved to be a peace which was ever in the progress of making, but never effectually made.

The Indian conferences, however, which were held at Albany during the early years of Dongan’s administration were concerned with objects wider and more important than

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the prevention of hostilities on the Maryland and Virginia frontier. The connections which had been established by the early missionaries, fur traders, and discoverers of New France with the Indians of the Great Lakes were now beginning to bear fruit in the form of vast territorial claims. The religious enthusiasm which had animated the first generation of missionaries had now been tempered by a more calculating spirit. The layman had come to assume his share in the great enterprise. Joliet and Father Marquette, in company and acting under authority from the intendant Talon, had discovered the Mississippi. Particularly after the advent of Frontenac and La Salle, and the building of the fort at Cataraqui on Lake Ontario, had decisive steps been taken to establish the claim of France, not only to all the territory drained by the Saint Lawrence, but to the seemingly limitless expanses of the Mississippi valley beyond. The natural centres for trade with the remote Indian tribes, Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimackinac, were already being preëmpted by the French. Events were rapidly multiplying, which threatened to exclude the English from the interior of the continent.

Although French officials had for some time been aware of the possibilities which lay before them, Thomas Dongan was the first English governor who clearly saw the trend of events. He realized, as fully as did the French, that the Iroquois held the key to the situation. They lay in the path of the westward advance of the French, and by their traditional hostility were one of the greatest hindrances to its progress. They at the same time occupied the one river valley which in the north opened to the English an avenue of approach to the western country. Their territory lay adjacent to the outposts of the French on the north, and to those of the English on the east and southeast. For more than twenty years Jesuit missionaries had been vainly striving to win them over to the Catholic religion and the French alliance. By the Dutch and English similar measures had not been attempted, and they had not been necessary. But it was already becoming the custom for the governor annually to meet representatives of the tribes at

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Albany or at New York, for the renewal of pledges of alliance. The commissioners at Albany were gradually increasing their functions. Agents, traders, individually and then in bands, were sent through the Iroquois country for the purpose of establishing direct relations with the tribes of the upper lakes. Dongan pursued a well-defined policy of this kind, for the purpose of diverting the fur trade of the northwest from the Saint Lawrence to Albany. It was intended as a counterstroke to offset the founding of Fort Frontenac.

By the course of action thus outlined, the English were preparing the way for the westward expansion of the province of New York. In the royal charter no westward limit beyond the valley of the Hudson had been assigned to it. When Dongan assumed office settlement had not advanced beyond the boundary thus indicated. But the idea of a claim to the entire Iroquois country was implied in the relations which had so long been maintained on the part of the Dutch and English with that confederation of tribes. That idea found definite utterance as soon as Dongan arrived in the province. The occasion of this was an attempt, which William Penn was just then making, to extinguish the claims of the savages to the upper Susquehanna valley. An inquiry was at once made, through the commissioners at Albany, concerning the location of that country and its relation to the fur trade in general.¹ They reported that a settlement on the Susquehanna would be much nearer to the Indians than Albany itself, and that the purchase of the country by Penn would be prejudicial to the government of the Duke of York. The Cayugas and Onondagas, who claimed the chief interest in the region, now informally transferred their rights in it to New York. The consequence was that, when Penn requested permission to send agents to Albany, or even to write to the Iroquois for the purpose of continuing negotiations for the purchase of the valley, he was refused.² Dongan afterwards admitted that he had expressed in private conversation a fear that Penn coveted his neighbor’s lands. The refusal of permission to Penn’s

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agents to treat at Albany suggests the idea of a peculiarly intimate relation between the government of New York and the lands of the Five Nations.

In connection with the conference of 1684, when the governor of Virginia was present, that idea for the first time was fully expressed. The Onondagas and Cayugas declared¹ not only that they had given the valley of the upper Susquehanna to New York as a pledge of protection against the French, and desired not that any of Penn’s people should settle there; but they put themselves under the protection of the English king, and would transfer none of their lands to any but the Duke of York. This submission, agreed to by the other tribes of the League, was written down that it might be sent to the “Great Sachem Charles, that lives on the other side of the great lake.” With the consent of the Indians the arms of the Duke of York were now affixed to all the castles of the Iroquois. They were also forbidden to hold any conference with the French without the permission of the English governor.

The transaction of August, 1684, definitely marks the beginning of the efforts of the English to change an alliance with the Five Nations into a protectorate over them, and by this means ultimately to secure possession of their territory. But the unsubstantial character of the submission then made is indicated by the fact that a large French force, under De la Barre, was about invading the country of the Iroquois, and the Indians strongly felt the need of assistance. When Arnold Viele, the agent whom Dongan sent to the council of the League at Onondaga, spoke to them imperiously, as if they belonged to the English king and the Duke of York, he was met by the equally definite assertion from one of the Onondaga chiefs, that the League was independent. Onontio, said he,—meaning the governor of Canada,—was still, as he had been, their father; and Corlaer—meaning the governor of New York—was their brother; this they were because the Indians had so willed it. This assertion of independence the Iroquois continued to maintain, when it served their purposes, through the entire colonial period. They sought their

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interest through two related lines of policy, that of apparent submission to the English when occasion served, and that of playing the French and English off against each other, the League thus attempting to hold the balance between them. The sudden and disastrous failure of De la Barre’s expedition, which was due to disease and famine caused largely by poor management, strengthened the confidence of the Iroquois. But it occasioned the recall of the incompetent De la Barre and the appointment of Denonville as his successor. This occurred just before New York became a royal province; and, in competition with Denonville, who was an experienced and able official, Dongan, as royal governor, vigorously continued his defence of English claims and interests.

The decisive conflicts with the Indians of the Carolinas and along the southern frontier did not occur until after the beginning of the eighteenth century. The northern colonies were by that time in the midst of the struggle with the French power in North America. From the time of its settlement, South Carolina had occasionally been engaged in wars with several tribes of Maskoki origin, which lived within a radius of one hundred miles of Charlestown. Spanish influences at times roused the Indians to hostilities, as in 1686, when the colony of Lord Cardross at Port Royal was destroyed. Indians served in large numbers on both sides in the encounters between the English and Spanish at the opening of the second intercolonial war. On these occasions the Creeks were in alliance with the English, and the Apalachi of Florida, who were the active allies of the Spanish, were severely punished by Colonel Moore on his second expedition.¹

But the first of the great Indian wars of the South occurred in North Carolina, in the years 1711 to 1713, and resulted in the destruction of a part of the Tuscarora nation, the flight of the remainder to New York, and the partial extinction of a number of small coast tribes.² Owing to the

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condition, resembling anarchy, which was well-nigh chronic in North Carolina, no serious effort had been made to regulate intercourse between the whites and the natives. The colonists lived carelessly in isolated and ill-defended settlements. Means of communication were so poor that the weak and crude provisions for a militia could scarcely be utilized to repel sudden attack. At the time when the outbreak occurred, such armed bands as the province contained had for some time been arrayed in civil strife, under Cary and the supporters of Governor Hyde. Sinister reports have come down to us to the effect that Cary, or some of his supporters, instigated the savages to attack his opponents; but the truth of this it would be impossible to substantiate. At the same time the growth of white settlements in North Carolina went steadily on, and with it the encroachment on the hunting-grounds of the savages. The results of this process had recently been made specially evident to the natives by the settlement of the palatine colony at New Berne. It is probable that all these causes, acting in conjunction, occasioned the plot of September, 1711. The Tuscaroras, who dwelt in the region of the Pamlico river, planned simultaneous attacks on the chief settlements of the province, to be made in part by themselves and in part by the neighboring tribes. The plan was executed upon the settlement south of Albemarle sound with appalling thoroughness. On the Roanoke, in the settlements about New Berne, and at Bath probably more than three hundred perished. Parties of savages also traversed the country north of Albemarle sound, and as far west as Chowan, though the execution wrought there was not so frightful as it was farther south. The slaughter lasted for three days, and proved to be the greatest single disaster of its kind which ever fell upon English settlements east of the Alleghanies.

As the military resources of the province were quite too weak to meet this crisis, appeals for aid were at once sent to Virginia and South Carolina.¹ Governor Spotswood contented himself with a strong demonstration on the North Carolina border, which restrained the Indians who were tributary

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to Virginia and a few Tuscarora towns. The burgesses expressed strong sympathy with the people of North Carolina and favored a declaration of war against the savages; but they did not make an appropriation in such form that the governor could use it for the purposes of war. In South Carolina a relief force under Colonel John Barnwell was at once organized, which consisted of a small body of militia and several hundred Indians. They marched overland from Charlestown to the Neuse river. There they formed a junction with the few militiamen whom Governor Hyde had been able to raise, and inflicted a severe defeat on the Indians near King Hancock’s fort, which they had constructed in the present Craven county. Barnwell was, however, restrained from an attempt to storm the fort¹ by the fear that the whites who were held within it as captives would be massacred. The South Carolina Indians now returned home. This led Barnwell, who was himself wounded, to conclude a truce which provided for the surrender of the fort by the Indians and the release of the captives who were held there. Barnwell then returned with his militiamen to South Carolina.

The Indians immediately renewed the war, and the North Carolina assembly was forced to vote £4000 for defence and to order the building of three forts. A small body of ill-equipped militia, of whose courage Barnwell at least had a poor opinion, had already been raised. Appeals for help were again sent to Virginia and South Carolina.

At this juncture occurred the death of Governor Hyde and the accession of President Pollock to the management of affairs. Virginia voted about £4000 to be used for the assistance of the Carolinas, but would send no troops unless Pollock would temporarily mortgage to her a strip of land along the northern border of the province. Pollock replied that for this he had no authority. The aid which he sought was again contributed by South Carolina in the form of a body of fifty whites and a thousand Indians under Colonel James Moore. By skilful negotiations with Tom Blunt, a Tuscarora chief, Pollock also sought to divide the Indian

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forces. In this he succeeded until, in February, 1713, Moore was able to capture the Tuscarora fort at Snow Hill. The Indian loss at this encounter was so great as effectually to break their power of resistance. Though the province was in great straits for food, the Indians held out only in detached bands and for a few months longer.

The Yemassee war, which occurred four years later in South Carolina, throws no new light on Indian relations, but contributed powerfully and directly to the revolt against proprietary government in that province.