Chief of Thirteen Fires

In the dying light of a winter day in 1791, a lone rider travelled towards the Presidential Mansion. The temperature had barely reached above freezing that day, and snow blanketed the ground. The rider wore the uniform of an officer of the US Regular Army, with its dark blue overcoat and white breeches.

Unlike the cold dark road behind him, the Presidential Mansion would have been full of light and life that evening.  Mrs. Washington was entertaining one of her weekly drawing rooms. Music and light spilled out onto the street as the officer reached the door.

The officer was nearly turned away. The President was at dinner with Martha and her guests, and he could not be bothered. But the officer was insistent.

[OFFICER]
Tell President Washington that I have just arrived from the western army, and my orders are to deliver this message to him in person.

[NARRATOR]

Washington reportedly left the table to greet the officer. A few minutes later, he returned without a word.

But according to some who knew Washington at the time, Washington could not keep it to himself for long. Once the guests departed later that evening, he purportedly turned to his secretary Tobias Lear and said:

[GEORGE WASHINGTON]

"It's all over—St. Clair's defeated—routed;—the officers nearly all killed, the men by wholesale; the route complete—too shocking to think of—and a surprise into the bargain!"

[NARRATOR]

St. Clair’s Defeat in 1791 was—and remains—the worst defeat of the US army by Native American forces in American history. Three times as many American men died at St. Clair’s defeat than were killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn. St. Clair had marched out that October on a punitive mission to destroy Miami and Wabash villages and enforce American land claims in the Northwest territories. But he was not prepared to face a well-organized Confederacy of Native Nations that took his men by surprise.

Washington received the news poorly. Just months before, he had warned St. Clair not to underestimate their enemy. By all accounts, the news enraged Washington.

[GEORGE WASHINGTON]

"Yes…HERE on this very spot, I took leave of him; I wished him success and honor; you have your instructions, I said, from the Secretary of War, I had a strict eye to them, and will add but one word—BEWARE OF A SURPRISE. I repeat it, BEWARE OF A SURPRISE... He went off with that as my last solemn warning thrown into his ears. And yet!! to suffer that army to be cut to pieces… by a surprise—the very thing I guarded him against!! O God, O God, he's worse than a murderer! how can he answer it to his country;—the blood of the slain is upon him—the curse of widows and orphans—the curse of Heaven!"^[1]

[NARRATOR]

St. Clair’s Defeat was just one incident in the complex relationship between the United States and the many, distinct independent, and sovereign Indigenous nations who lived on lands claimed by the new country. As the United States—and George Washington—looked to expand westward, new treaties, agreements, and truces had to be negotiated with Native nations. And to no great surprise, these same nations were increasingly distrustful of the motives of the United States.

For much of the previous two centuries, individual colonial and state governments had brokered such treaties. But these entities often acted in contradiction to each other, leading to escalating violence and broken promises. By the 1790s, settlers in the northwest territories—which were not yet states—had a habit of squatting on lands the US government had vowed not to inhabit.

To address these concerns, the Constitution gave Congress the right to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

But this was much more complicated to put into practice. In the events described by today’s episode, nearly 20 separate, independent nations were involved. These include the Miami, the Shawnee, the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Creeks, and Cherokee. Each nation had a unique relationship to the United States and distinct cultural practices. In many ways, neither Washington himself nor his advisors fully comprehended the complexity of the situation in the events leading up to and resulting from St. Clair’s defeat.

Many questions remained. How could a President negotiate with foreign nations while simultaneously claiming sovereignty over the lands those nations inhabited? How could the President exert federal control over the West when they could not control their own settlers? And where, in the face of defeat, could Washington turn for advice and counsel?

This is Inventing the Presidency, Episode 3: Chief of Thirteen Fires

[MUSIC BREAK]

[CALLOWAY]

Indian Country is a complex mosaic of different Indigenous nations, so that when Washington looks there, thinks there, goes there, he touches a world made up of these multiple nations, and that requires a degree of political savvy on his point too, in dealing with those nations.

[NARRATOR]

This is Colin Calloway, Professor of History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth. His book The Indian World of George Washington won the George Washington book prize in 2019.

[CALLOWAY]

The dominant power in the North-East of it is the Haudenosaunee, the League of the Iroquois, the Six nations of Iroquois: Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscaroras.

Dominating from essentially upstate New York, from the Hudson Valley to Buffalo and into Pennsylvania. The dominant powers in the South, Cherokees in the Southern Appalachians, Creeks in Georgia, Alabama, that's a confederacy of something like 50 sort of semi-autonomous towns, and then smaller nations like the Shawnees in the Ohio Valley who nonetheless exert significant influence in the…in how relationships develop between Indian country and the United Nations and their allies and close nations, the Delawares or Lenape. People who have a history and a reputation and a tradition of being diplomats, peacemakers among Nations, but whose story reflects the dispossession and in many cases the diaspora of Native peoples that has happened since Europeans arrived.

[NARRATOR]

The legal and political approaches taken by the early United States to Native nations were deeply entwined with negotiation over the powers of the federal government, its expansion westward, and its treaty powers with foreign nations.

It is also, as you can imagine, a deeply complex issue. Native nations were not and are not a monolith. They are independent sovereign groups, each with unique linguistic, cultural, religious, and political practices.

Gregory Ablavsky, Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford University,  explains:

[ABLAVSKY]

They were thought of as being sovereigns outside the direct legislative control of the United States.

And so this conundrum, this sort of legal question of what does it mean to have sort of effectively foreign sovereigns that are nonetheless within the boundaries of the United States was basically the primary legal challenge that Anglo Americans faced in figuring out how to classify and define Native peoples. And arguably, it's one that the United States never really fully solved.

[NARRATOR]

By the time Washington was born, European settlement in North America had overtaken nearly the entire eastern seaboard. Through a combination of treaties, land sales, warfare, and outright squatting, the Euroamerican communities of the Atlantic seaboard had expanded from tiny strips of settlement into a continuous belt of control snaking up the Atlantic coast from South Carolina to Maine’s Casco Bay in the north.

And they were looking to expand ever further west.

In 1783, the War for Independence ended with the Treaty of Paris. In this treaty, Britain ceded to the United States all of the land east of the Mississippi, below the Great Lakes, and north of Florida.

The news came as a shock to the native inhabitants who had lived in these regions for thousands of years. They  were not granted a say in the Treaty of Paris. Adding insult to injury, many had fought on the side of the British, only to see the British hand over lands that they believed King George had no right to give in the first place.

These grievances persisted as the United States struggled to gain a foothold as an independent nation. The decision to delegate so-called “Indian Policy” to the United States remained controversial with many states such as Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

In 1787, as the Constitutional Convention deliberated, the Confederation Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance. This created legal procedures for the settlement of the new territories west of the Appalachians and the eventual process by which they could become states. It provided settlers with certain rights as American citizens, such as freedom of religion and habeas corpus. It also banned slavery in the northwest territories. One of the goals of the Northwest Ordinance was to control American settlement to avoid violence with Native nations in the west.

While Washington was not president at the time of the Ordinance’s passing, he did believe strongly in the policies that it set. Here’s Greg Ablavsky again:

[ABLAVSKY]

During the period of the Articles of Confederation, he goes on a tour. And as part of that tour, he goes to what would become Northwest territory, and he sort of is shocked to discover all these White settlers are now trespassing on native lands, violating the fact that the Continental Congress has actually prohibited them from being on this land.

So Washington and many of the other Federalists embrace a vision in which they say, "Look, we need to ensure orderly systematic settlement." And they really hammer home on these ideas about orderly and systematic. They want there to be clear, established federal laws that govern how this process is going to unfold, and they want those laws to be strongly enforced by the Federal Government, so it's a much more nationalist division for how this process will unfold.

[NARRATOR]

Throughout all of this, land speculators continued to push settlement schemes across all of the territories:

[MATT-NEWSPAPER VOICE]

This is to inform those who wish to become adventurers to the Tennessee Company’s purchase, that the said company will embark, from the confluence of the Holston and the French Broad rivers, on the tenth day of January next for the purpose of forming a settlement on the said purchase at or near the Muscle Shoals.^[2]

[NARRATOR]

Washington himself speculated in land. Long before the American Revolution, Washington had set his eyes westward. His older half-brother Lawrence was a land speculator with investments in the Ohio Company of Virginia, and as a teenager, Washington had surveyed lands in the Shenandoah Valley.

[CALLOWAY]

George Washington, of course, grew up in Virginia. And I think our popular cultural assumption is that there were Indian people in Virginia when Jamestown happened, and then there was uprisings and the Indians were defeated. Therefore, they're gone. And of course, that wasn't the case. Native peoples everywhere survived in the waves of massive wars of destruction, etc.

The first encounter of George Washington, with Native people that kind of registers I suppose in the documentary record, is when as a teenager he goes West, or what one constituted West where the surveying party and recalls in his diary meeting a group of Native people and his depiction of them is may be not outwardly hostile, but it's kind of stereotypical. These are people who... They do a dance, it has to be a war dance, all of that kind of thing.

And it's a passing encounter, and I actually don't attach too much significance to it, other than what it reveals about the attitudes of the society that Washington grew up in because I think he simply betrays those attitudes. His first encounter is deemed significant, I suppose, to biographies of George Washington, of course, when he's sent by Governor Dinwiddie into Ohio country in the early 1750s.

[NARRATOR]

It was this fateful expedition of 1753 that shifted the course of Washington’s life. 

In the early 1750s, French expansion in the Ohio River Valley threatened British claims, especially the commercial interests of the Ohio Company of Virginia. Sent as an envoy by Governor Dinwiddie to French forces in the Ohio country, Washington met with several Native leaders through his journey to ask for their support against the French. This included the important political leader Tanacharison of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Six Nations. A year later, Washington, accompanied by Tanacharison, led an ambush against the French envoy Jumonville. In the ensuing scuffle, Jumonville was killed, and the Seven Years’ War, sometimes called the true first World War, began.^[3]

The Jumonville Glen incident and the resulting loss at Fort Necessity was a grave misstep for the 21-year old Washington. He would eventually resign his commission in the Virginia militia. In 1755, Washington was back in the West, this time accompanying General Edward Braddock in an attempt to conquer Fort Duquesne. During the disastrous Battle of the Monongahela, Braddock and at least half of his men were killed. 

Washington’s retreat during the battle saved the lives of many British soldiers and secured his reputation as a commander. It also left an indelible impact on Washington’s own outlook, both in the future administration of the Western Territories and with his rapport with Native nations. Throughout the course of the War, Washington would realize how powerful the support of Native allies could be. At the same time, he understood intimately the potential danger of facing Nation nations as enemies.

Despite the high risk involved, Washington would continue to pursue Western expansion. A shrewd businessman, Washington could not ignore the great financial promise of these lands.

[ABLAVSKY.]

Washington was a notorious land speculator. He actually began his career as a surveyor in many of these sorts of Western lands in Virginia. He was very invested as a result in the idea of Western expansion and how Western expansion would in fact operate both personally in terms of the sense that he had a financial stake in its outcome, but also I think sort of more broadly in a broad theoretical sense.

It was complicated in part because Washington's own views in this area, I'd say changed over time. Washington sort of started his career fighting against Native peoples.

In the lead up to the Constitution, and then when he becomes President, he has a very different vision for how the relationship should operate. He is horrified by the sort of naked violence and expropriation that is happening in the states, and once again, he sort of falls back on the view that we talked about earlier, that he wants Western settlement to be an orderly, methodical and systematic process.

There will be clear, well-established rules that both Natives and White settlers have to obey. And they will be rigidly enforced by the Federal Government. So he and Knox both places a lot of emphasis on treaties. These are formal legal documents that will define the relationship between Native nations and the United States. And then once these treaties have been ratified, they need to be scrupulously adhered to by both sides.

[NARRATOR]

When Washington became President, then, he believed in the central importance of the West to the future of the country. He also believed that the orderly settling of this land by Americans was the responsibility of the Federal government he now led. Ensuring peace with Native people, he believed, was the only way to accomplish this, and he took his role as the man who was responsible for negotiating treaties seriously.

But Washington was not alone in shouldering these responsibilities. Henry Knox, the Secretary of War, was in many ways the primary figure in both Indian Affairs and territorial administration during the Washington administration. Knox’s post predates Washington’s Presidency; he had served as Secretary of War since 1785.

[ABLAVSKY]

Henry Knox, this Boston bookseller rises to prominence during the war for his role in managing the military. Interesting, he has very little experience or exposure to what we might think of as the West. He does not really have much experience with any of the questions that he's actually going to end up running when he becomes... Becomes Secretary at War under the Articles of Confederation. And then he transitions into the... With a slight title change as Secretary of War in the Washington administration.

The Secretary of War has a lot of responsibilities over these Western territories. In part that's because a lot of the nascent US Army is actually stationed in these territories, and also because the Department of War is charged with what is known as Indian Affairs. And so Henry Knox ends up for someone who had spent very little time, grappling with or thinking about Native peoples, he ends up being really important and influential in shaping federal policy toward Native peoples.

[NARRATOR]

Early in his presidency in 1789, Washington and Knox attempted to negotiate new treaties with the Creek and Cherokee nations.^[4] The Creek and Cherokee homelands included lands now within the borders of the United States. Having had no voice in the Treaty of Paris, they wanted a new treaty–one that would protect their land from Euroamerican settlers.

A few years earlier in 1785, Alexander McGillivray would write to a Spanish envoy on this very matter. With a Scottish father and a Muscogee/Creek mother, McGillivray was a leader of the Muscogee Creek nation and a prominent liaison between the United States and the Creek people. On behalf of the chiefs of the  Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee Nations, he asserted:

[ALEXANDER MCGILLIVRAY]

We Chiefs and Warriors of the Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee Nations, do hereby in the most solemn manner protest against any title claim or demand the American Congress may set up for or against our lands, Settlements, and hunting Grounds in Consequence of the Said treaty of peace between the King of Great Britain and the States of America declaring that as we were not parties, so we are determined to pay no attention to the Manner in which the British Negotiators has draw out the Lines of the Lands in question Ceded to the States of America—it being a Notorious fact known to the Americans, known to every person who is in any ways conversant in, or acquainted with American affairs, that his Brittannick Majesty was never possessed either by session purchase or by right of Conquest of our Territories and which the Said treaty gives away.^[5]

[NARRATOR]

In 1789, Federal Representatives planned attend a meeting between the States of North and South Carolina and the Creek and Cherokee nations. Washington and Knox intended to prepare official instructions for these representatives. According to the Constitution, it was Washington’s responsibility to seek the “advice and consent” of the Senate in such matters.

Yet instead of providing advice and consent, the Senate postponed issue after issue.

After he was asked to return to the Senate at a later date, Washington reportedly started up and yelled:

[George Washington]

This defeats every purpose of my coming here!

[CHERVINSKY]

On the way out, he reportedly said that he would never again return for advice.

[NARRATOR]

Here is Lindsay Chervinsky, presidential historian and author of The Cabinet.

[CHERVINSKY]

The evidence about whether or not he actually said that is a little fuzzy, it's kind of a wives tale but he was definitely thinking it because he never again returned for advice. And no President since has ever returned to the Senate for advice in that way.

So what that means is just a couple of months into his Presidency, this key element of the institution of how the President is supposed to get advice and support on Foreign Policy, one of the most important issues in the President's portfolio, doesn't work.

He has decided that the Senate is annoying, they're inefficient, they're bad advisors, and he doesn't wanna work with them. And so he starts looking for some other options.

[NARRATOR]

In Washington’s mind, he had done everything according to the letter. He had prepared and

submitted remarks on the treaties. He had observed the decorum of the Senate in

asking for their advice. And he had withheld action until arriving at Senate. For the matter to be further delayed on all accounts irritated him. He had done what he was supposed to do. Why hadn’t the Senate?

Washington decided to take matters into his own hands and maintain executive control over foreign diplomacy and treaties.

But one central tension was left unresolved: American expansion meant Native dispossession. How could Washington and Knox – how could anyone – secure peace with the very people being pushed out of their homes?

 [CORNPLANTER]

Father: the voice of the Seneca nation speaks to you, the great councillor, in whose heart the wise men of all the Thirteen Fires have placed their wisdom…When you army entered the country of the Six Nations, we called you the town destroyer; and to this day, when that name is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mothers. Our councillors and warriors are men, and cannot be afraid; but their hearts are grieved with the fears of our women and children, and desire it may be buried so deep as to be heard no more.

[NARRATOR]

This is a speech given by Cornplanter, a leader of the Seneca people, upon his visit to Philadelphia in 1790 to speak to President Washington. To many native nations, Washington was known as the Chief of Thirteen Fires. But, as Cornplanter references, there was another name he was known by: Town Destroyer.

[CORNPLANTER]

Father: you have said that we are in your hand, and that, by closing it, you could crush us to nothing. Are you determined to crush us? If you are tell us so, that those of our nation who have become your children, and have determined to die so, may know what to do.

…

Father: we will not conceal from you, that the great God, and not men, has preserved the Cornplanter from the hands of his own nation. For they ask, continually, Where is the land which our children, and their children after them, are to lie down upon? You told us, say they, that the line drawn from Pennsylvania to lake Ontario, would mark it forever on the east, and the line running from Beaver Creek to Pennsylvania, would mark it on the west, and we see that it is not so. For, first one, and then another, come, and take it away, by order of that people which you tell us promised to secure it to us…All the lands we have been speaking of belonged to the Six Nations; no part of it ever belonged to the King of England, and he could not give it to you.^[6]

[NARRATOR]

Cornplanter was considered friendly to the United States, but he expressed concerns about American rhetoric shared by many Native people. Whatever agreements the Federal government made with the Six Nations tended to be ignored by settlers and state governments looking to expand their land claims. And the Six Nations, like the Creek and Cherokee, saw the Treaty of Paris as invalid. Washington responded:

[WASHINGTON]

I am not uninformed, that the Six Nations have been led into some difficulties, with respect to the sale of their lands, since the peace. But I must inform you that these evils arose before the present Government of the United States was established, when the separate states, and individuals under their authority, undertook to treat with the Indian tribes respecting the sale of their lands. But the case is now entirely altered; the General Government, only, has the power to treat with the Indian nations, and any treaty formed, and held without its authority, will not be binding.

Here, then, is the security for the remainder of your lands. No State, nor person, can purchase your lands, unless at some public treaty, held under the authority of the United States. The General Government will never consent to your being defrauded, but will protect you in all your just rights.

…

The United States desire to be the friends of the Indians, upon terms of justice and humanity; but they will not suffer the depredations of the bad Indians to go unpunished. My desire is, that you would caution all the Senecas, and Six Nations, to prevent their rash young men from joining the Maumee[Miami] Indians: for the United States cannot distinguish the tribes to which bad Indians belong, and every tribe must take care of their own people.^[7]

[NARRATOR]

Washington’s response to Cornplanter alludes to the precarity of the situation in the west by 1790. The land claimed by the Americans as the Northwest Territory was home to a wide range of peoples and nations. Most, like the Miami, had been living in the Ohio River Valley and Great Lakes region for centuries; others, like the Lenni Lenape, had been pushed west from their original homes by settler expansion. Among the latter were some Piscataways, who had once lived across the river from Washington’s plantation at Mount Vernon. Settler violence had led Miamis, Shawnees, Lenapes or Delawares, and others to come together into a loose political body known to Americans Northwest Confederation.

Many members of the Northwestern Confederacy resisted making treaties with the United States, believing that the United States had proven either incapable or unwilling to control their people. Settlers often ignored the treaties established by their federal government and illegally squatted on indigenous lands.

In 1790, American emissary Anthony Gamelin traveled through Miami and Wabash villages to convince them to negotiate with Americans. He recorded their speeches in his journal.

[GAMELIN]

I, Anthony Gamelin, by order of Major Hamtramck, set off from fort Knox the 5^th of April, to proceed to Miami Town with the speeches of his Excellency Arthur St. Clair and to receive the answer of the Wabash and Miami nations.

….The 14^th of April, the [Ottawa] and the Kickapoos were assembled. After my speech, one of the head chiefs got up and told me:… “The chief of America invites us to go to him, if we are for peace; he has not his leg broke, having been able to go as far as the Illinois: he might come here himself, and we should be glad to see him at our village…”

The 25^th of April, Blue Jacket, chief warrior of the Shawnee, invited me to go to his house and told me, “My friend, by the name and consent of the [Shawnees] and Delawares, I will speak to you…From all quarters, we receive speeches from the Americans, and no one is alike. We suppose that they intend to deceive us.^[8]

 [NARRATOR]

From the perspective of Shawnees and many others in these lands, the Americans were hypocrites. Why was it that they demanded the chiefs to travel all the way to Philadelphia or New York but Washington never traveled to them? How was it that countless emissaries came to them with inconsistent promises but could not keep the settlers from enacting violence against Native people? And how could they keep insisting that the United States could do as they please with the land when neither the King of Great Britain nor the President of the United States had any rights to that land in the first place?

But Washington’s Indian policy was also unpopular with settlers. They wanted the Federal Government to take a more aggressive stance against Native raids and felt abandoned by the government, who they believed should be more willing to take a pro-Settler, anti-Native stance.

To some, Washington’s Federal Government seemed to be making the same unpopular decisions as the British had decades before.

In 1763, the British established the controversial Proclamation Line, which prohibited further Euroamerican settlement west of the crest of the Appalachian Mountains. Meant in part to prevent further war with Indigenous people, and in part to keep settlers close to the coast where they could be more effectively controlled, this controversial line is considered one of the grievances that led to the American Revolution.

Just like the British, Washington’s Federal government was limiting settler’s movement, entering into unpopular agreements with Native nations, and –as we’ll discuss next episode–levying unwanted taxes that seemed to target poor, rural farmers. 

And just like the British, the Federal government struggled to contain American settlers who pushed west, nor could they put an end to the violence that erupted between settlers and Native nations. In 1790, Field Officers in Harrison County in what is now Kentucky wrote to Washington:

[MALE VOICE]

The frontiers are left defenceless; the people, who lay exposed, are complaining that they are neglected… that the Government has got thoughtless about the lives of their citizens…^[9]

[NARRATOR]

Washington persisted in the belief that peace could be an option…but that such a peace required the Native nations to fall in line and submit to treaties enforced by the United States, and settlers to follow the dictates of the Federal Government even if it restricted their ability to expand. It was a policy that pleased none and angered many. That war soon followed was, perhaps, predictable.

In 1791, this would all come to a head in the Battle of Wabash, more famously known as St. Clair’s Defeat.

Arthur St. Clair was the governor of the Northwest Territory with a storied military career during the Revolution and a stint as the President of the Continental Congress. In 1790, after failed attempts by Colonel Josiah Harmar to suppress Native resistance in the Northwest, Washington and Knox authorized St. Clair to lead a new expedition to coerce the Miami and Wabash into a treaty with the United States.

In March of 1791, Washington and Knox tasked Thomas Proctor with delivering messages to the Miami, Wabash, Seneca, Lenape, and Wyandot people. In his written address to the Miami, dated March 11th, 1791, Washington warned them:

WASHINGTON

The President of the United States, General Washington the great chief of the thirteen fires, Speaks to you by this address. Listen attentively to him, for he speaks of things of the highest importance to your future welfare.

This address to you, is the offspring of a desire to save you from ruin. It is therefore of the last consequence, that you should understand and receive it as a right. It is unmixed with fear, and dictated by the pure principles of humanity.

The President of the United States is anxious that you should understand your true situation, and the consequences of your persisting any longer in the exercise of hostilities.

The United States are powerful, and able to send forth such numbers of warriors, as would drive you entirely out of the Country. It is true this conduct would occasion some trouble to us, but it would be absolute destruction to you, your women and your children.

The United States require nothing of you but peace; nay they are desirous of making you to understand the cultivation of the earth, and teaching you how much better it is for human kind to have comfortable houses, and to have plenty to eat and drink and to be well clothed, than to be exposed to all the calamities belonging to a savage life.

Reflect that this is the last offer that can be made; That if you do not embrace it now, your doom must be sealed forever.^[10]

[NARRATOR]

The intention behind this campaign was clear: to intimidate the Miami and Wabash people into submitting to a treaty with the United States. They would not, however, be so easily daunted. Here’s Greg Ablavsky:

[ABLAVSKY]

What Native people perceive is that a Federal Government that continually said, we are interested in peace, has now launched an armed invasion of their home lands. And so predictably what this supposedly targeted narrow intervention ends up accomplishing, it ends up uniting this sort of broad-scale amorphous Confederacy of a diverse set of Native peoples from throughout the Midwest and Great Lakes region to resist what they see as a US invasion of their home lands.

[NARRATOR]

American attacks continued throughout 1791, as St. Clair assembled a massive force for a punitive mission to the Upper Miami River. When St. Clair’s army began its march, Shawnee, Lenape, Kickapoo, Wyandot, Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi warriors gathered in Miami towns to prepare their defense. At the head of this alliance was the Shawnee chief Blue Jacket, Little Turtle of the Miami, and the Lenape leader Buckongahelas. British traders with longstanding ties to these Native nations helped supply their forces.

At the start of the campaign, St. Clair’s forces numbered around 1400 soldiers, plus an additional 200 camp followers, which included women and children. The campaign was plagued with issues from the beginning. Low pay attracted what some historians have called a lower caliber of recruit, and desertion thinned the ranks early in the campaign. Soldiers complained of poor leadership, and St. Clair suffered from gout that slowed his advance.

In comparison, the Native forces were well-organized and united under strong leadership.

With a little over 1,000 warriors, the combined Native forces launched from the Miami towns to meet St. Clair on October 28th. On the evening of November 3rd, St. Clair allowed his troops to camp without assembling the breastworks typically used to fortify their position. On this same night, the Confederacy surrounded the camp in a crescent formation and waited for dawn.^[11] They were led by Blue Jacket of the Shawnee and Little Turtle of the Miami.

In the early morning of November 4th, the Native forces watched as the American soldiers, cold and likely hungry, soldiers stacked their arms to prepare for their morning assembly. Then, they made their move.

Here is the account of Lieutenant William Darke, as he wrote it to Washington:

[DARKE]

As Soon as it was Light in the Morning of the 4^th, the advanced Guards of the Militia fired, I pursued the enemy about four hundred yards who Ran off in all directions…[a] Number of the Indians Got into our Camp and Got possession of the Artillery …the whole Army Ran together like a Mob at a fair, and had it Not been for the Greatest Exertions of the officers would have Stood there til all killed… the confusion in the Retreat is beyond description, the men throwing away their arms.^[12]

[NARRATOR]

Somewhere between 650 and 900 Americans died that day, including most of St. Clair’s officers. Another 300 were said to be wounded.^[13] Of the women and children that accompanied the troops, less is known, although many doubtless perished.^[14]

The incident was a blow for Washington and his administration. Newspapers drew comparisons to Braddock’s disastrous defeat decades earlier. Darke publicly criticized Washington’s decision to appoint St. Clair as leader of the campaign:

[DARKE]

“That the executive should commit the reputation of the government, the event of a war already irksome to the people, and safety of the frontier, to a man, who from the situation of his health, was under the necessity of travelling on a bier, seems to have been an oversight as unexpected as it has been severely censured. A general, enwrapped ten-fold in flannel robes, unable to walk alone, placed on his car, bolstered on all sides with pillows and medicines, and thus moving on to attack the most active enemy in the world, was to the people of Kentuckey a rare show of a very tragi-comical appearance indeed.”

[NARRATOR]

If the goal was to intimidate the Northwest Confederacy, the US had failed. Not only did the Confederacy win a mighty victory, but they were now supplied with the spoils of war–including cannons, guns, horses, and clothing. The warriors soon split up to return to their homes.

Meanwhile, St. Clair’s Defeat was a devastating blow to the stability of the United States. Washington knew that the young republic faced a number of enemies from both North America and Europe. Should they be defeated again in such a way, the entire nation could be at risk.

Washington and Knox knew that they had to invest in a proper army. A professionally standing army. They entrusted this task to General Anthony Wayne. Wayne learned a crucial lesson from St. Clair. He would insist on taking the time needed to train his troops. Nor would he lead a march in winter.

The defeat was such a blow not only to the American military but to morale in the Federal government as well. In 1792, Congress demanded an inquiry into the defeat–it would be the first Congressional investigation in American history.

Washington’s response to this request would forever set a precedent for the relationship between the Legislative and Executive branches. Thus, Washington wanted to carefully consider his options. Having lost faith in seeking the council of the Senate, he knew that he needed to find advisors elsewhere.

St. Clair’s defeat did not cause the formation of the Cabinet but it did provide its first major test. Washington had consulted with the heads of individual executive departments individually but he had never gathered them as a formal advisory body. The first formal meeting of the Cabinet was on November 26, 1791–just weeks after St. Clair’s defeat and right before news officially reached Philadelphia.

But many opposed the idea of a Presidential Cabinet. Here’s Lindsay Chervinsky:

[CHERVINSKY]

the word Cabinet, originally the Privy Council was the King’s primary advisory body, and as the Privy Council got larger, it became unwieldy and difficult for the King to manage. And so he started pulling a couple of his favorite Ministers into a small room off the Privy Council chambers, and that small room was called the King’s Cabinet. Cabinet meant a small closet type space. So this group became known as the King’s Cabinet Council, and then eventually council was dropped and was just the King’s Cabinet.

The word 'Cabinet' is not written in the Constitution. There was no provision to create an Executive body or an advisory body other than the Senate. And in fact, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention explicitly rejected several proposals to create that type of advisory body.

The Delegates of the Constitutional Convention rejected proposals for an Executive organization or a Cabinet for a couple of reasons. They feared it would become a place where cronyism and a cabal and intrigue and corruption would fester just like they believed had festered in the British version. Most Americans at the time blamed the British Cabinet for instigating the conflicts that led to the American Revolution

[NARRATOR]

The obvious connections between the King’s Cabinet and Washington’s cabinet drew unfavorable comparisons, but by 1791, Washington felt had little choice but to establish a council of advisors. At the same time, he understood what made the King’s cabinet so dangerous: the lack of transparency and the aura of exclusivity.

[CHERVINSKY]

 In the Cabinet at the time were Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of War, Henry Knox, and Attorney General, Edmund Randolph.

Washington set about selecting these individuals carefully with three conditions in mind. First, he wanted to know them, he wanted to trust them...makes sense if you're gonna work with someone and take their advice, you want to trust that the advice is good advice.

Second, he wanted to make sure that they were experienced and knowledgeable in a way that he was not or that augmented his own experience and knowledge. So for example, Thomas Jefferson spoke French fluently, which was the language of Diplomacy at the time.

And the third factor was Washington was very attentive to what we would think of today as Cabinet diversity. He picked people that came from different States, that represented different economic interests, different cultural traditions, different educational backgrounds, and religions, and in doing so, he was trying to bring the country together in the Cabinet.

And so it was essential that he had lots of different perspectives, representing lots of different ways to be an American citizen at that time in his Administration. And he believed that it would make him a better President and it did make him a better President because they brought different and various views to a lot of different challenges.

[NARRATOR]

When a Congressional Inquiry into St. Clair’s defeat began in early 1792, Congress requested papers from the executive. Understanding the momentous nature of this requested, Washington gathered the cabinet for a meeting in March.

What did this meeting accomplish? Washington and his secretaries informed Congress that they were not to approach the executive offices as separate entities–rather, all inquiries had to be addressed to the President. This small move ensured cohesion in the Executive Branch and unified the executive offices under Washington.^[15]

The Cabinet then concluded that the President had a responsibility to disclose papers that would serve the public good but also invested the President with the right to withhold any papers which would harm the public good–an important distinction that also served as an important early precedent for executive power.^[16]

The Cabinet cooperated with the inquiry, and in May of 1792, the Committee acquitted St. Clair, although his reputation would be irrevocably tarnished.

Talks with the Confederacy would continue. In 1792, a council of at least sixteen nations met, including the Miami, Shawnee, Lenape, Creek, Cherokee, and members of the Six Nations, the latter of whom attempted to negotiate a peace offer on behalf of the United States. It was a tough sell. Tensions were high, and opinions were divided. Some–including the Shawnee, Miami, and Lenape–proclaimed that the United States would continue to be their enemy and that they would stop American expansion at any cost. But others–such as the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi–were willing to compromise–if only to try to shield their own people against further violence.

In 1794, the US would strike a crushing blow against the Northwest confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and in 1795, the Northwest War ended with the Treaty of Greenville.

St. Clair’s defeat remains the worst defeat of American forces by Native forces in American history. Some rank it among the worst defeats in US history. Although few Americans are familiar with it, the war would have an indelible impact on the course of American history.

Greg Ablavsky describes its impact:

[ABLAVSKY]

I think the legacy of the. Washington administration is two-fold. I think we might think of it as both the promise and the reality. I think the vision of a Federal Government that is going to use its authority to try to restrain US citizens to do justice to Native peoples, at least envisions justice endures. And the idea that this was something that he was part of what the Federal Government was responsible for, and that this was actually essential in some ways to the national character that lives on.

And we didn't talk about the ending of that war in 1794, when they had poured millions of dollars into a revitalized US Army, and they successfully defeated the Northwest Native Confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers and then forced them to enter into the Treaty of Greenville.

So I think the Washington administration sort of encapsulates some of the paradoxes that you see in the Federal Government's treatment of Native peoples from... In the beginning. In other words, they have these aspirations of fair treatment, and at times Native people that are going to be able mobilize those promises in ways that are effective, but the promises proved illusory? Not I think because Knox and Washington didn't sincerely mean them, but because they misunderstood their own political authority and they misunderstood the dynamics of the new nation that they had helped create.

[NARRATOR]

As for Washington, the crisis tested the resolve of his Federal government, but he emerged from the other side with a stronger army, a more cohesive Executive Branch, and a new blueprint for the expansion of the United States.

But in the years between St. Clair’s Defeat in 1791 and the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, there would be many new trials for Washington to face. Confidence in the Federal government waned in the West. Many had seen St. Clair’s Defeat as a sign of the government’s inability or even unwillingness to protect white settlers in these territories. Those on the western frontiers of Pennsylvania expressed fears about their lack of ammunition and other protections. And divisions deepened between the Eastern and Western parts of the country.

For Washington may have established the Executive’s prerogative over foreign diplomacy with Native nations–but what would he do when his own people rebelled?

[NEWSPAPER]

Philadelphia, July 25, 1794, The Gazette of the United States,

Two days since, seven miles from this town, the house of General John Neville, inspector of the revenue, was attacked by about eighty armed men, said to be opposed to the excise law…Last night, …they again attacked the house, said to be six hundred in number…All is confusion. God only knows what will be the issue.”^[17]

[NARRATOR]

Next time on Inventing the Presidency…

The capital of the United States moves to Philadelphia, where it will weather some of the most contentious years of Washington’s presidency.

[GANESHRAM].

What's important to understand about this is this was an absolutely terrifying situation for men like Washington and other enslavers in the United States. Uprisings, revolts among enslaved people in the Caribbean have happened or did happen from the 17th Century, and they would have known about it, particularly in the West Indies. There was revolt after revolt, they were always put down at great expense to the African community in terms of loss of life and punishment, but they continued. So there was this constant fear amongst, particularly the planter class in America of the same thing happening here.

[NARRATOR]

And in the midst of one of the worst pandemics in American history, Washington has to put down a new threat to American unity–the Whiskey Rebellion.

[SPERO]

In some ways, historians have said, this is like the Stamp Act and the protest to it happening all over again, for the United States of America. So the tax really got at these divisions within United States, between East and West, between those in the East who might have access to more hard money, and those in the West who relied on different forms of exchange like barter.

Notes

^[1]  Richard Rush, Washington in Domestic Life: From Original Letters and Manuscripts. Philadelphia, B. Lippincott and co, 1857. George Washington Parke Custis provides a similar account of the same events in his Recollections and Memoirs of Washington.

^[2] U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 - 1875. American State Papers. Indian Affairs: Volume 1: 115. https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=007/llsp007.db&recNum=116

^[3] See Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023 127-133. For more on Seven Years War, see  Fred Anderson. Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.

^[4] Lindsay M. Chervinsky, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020: 1-9.

^[5] John Walton Caughey, ed., McGillivray of the Creeks (University of Oklahoma Press, 1938), 91.

^[6] Speech of Cornplanter, Half-Town, and Great-Tree, Dec 1790, at Philadelphia https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=007/llsp007.db&recNum=143

^[7] “The Reply of the President of the United States to the Speech of the Cornplanter, Half-Town, and Great-Tree, Chiefs and Councillors of the Seneca nation of Indians.” American State Papers: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875. https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=007/llsp007.db&recNum=143

^[8] “Memorandum of sundry speeches held by Anthony Gamelin to the chiefs of the Wabash and Miami Nations.” 1790 https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=007/llsp007.db&recNum=95 

^[9] Representation from the Field Officers of Harrison county to the President, 2 Feb 1790 https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsp&fileName=007/llsp007.db&recNum=88

^[10] “From George Washington to the Miami Indians, 11 March 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-07-02-0314.

^[11] Colin Calloway, The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015: 110-114

^[12] “To George Washington from William Darke, 9–10 November 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-09-02-0094.

^[13] Wiley Sword, President Washington’s Indian War: The Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1790-1795. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985: 195; William Hogeland, Autumn of the Black Snake: The Creation of the U.S. Army and the Invasion that Opened the West. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017: 16. 

^[14] Hogeland 116

^[15] Chervinsky 178.

^[16] Calloway 136

^[17] "Extract of a Letter from Pittsburgh, Dated July 18, to a Merchantile House in This City." Hartford Gazette (Hartford, Connecticut) I, no. 58, July 31, 1794: [2].