Did the American Revolution cause a civil war within the Iroquois confederacy?

Transcription

1 Did the American Revolution cause a civil war within the Iroquois confederacy? IROQUOIS Viewpoint: Yes. The American Revolution caused unprecedented internal conflict among the Iroquois and reduced the power and prestige of their confederacy. Viewpoint: No. Although Iroquois warriors fought on opposing sides during the American Revolution, they made efforts to minimize conflict with each other. The American Revolution ( ) has been described by both contemporaries and scholars as a civil war, with colonial society divided among Patriots, Loyalists, and neutrals. This division in colonial society was replicated in Native American communities residing east of the Mississippi River. Perhaps the best example of this Native American division is the Iroquois confederacy. Consisting of six tribes (Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Tuscarora), the League of the Iroquois controlled a huge area stretching westward from the Catskill Mountains to Lake Erie. During the eighteenth century increasing warfare and disease decreased their numbers from an estimated 16,000 in 1700 to approximately 12,500 on the eve of the Revolution. Despite their declining numbers, the Six Nations were the most advanced and powerful Native American confederacy east of the Mississippi and far outnumbered white settlers in Western New York. However, when England drove the French from North America in 1763, the Iroquois lost much of their political and economic leverage against the English. Still, when violence broke out between America and England in 1775, the Iroquois sought to remain neutral, but they would fight against whoever first encroached upon their lands and trade. Both the British, who expected the conflict to be short, and the Americans, who feared fighting a two-front war in the West and East, urged the Indians to keep their hatchets buried. Yet, as the war spread throughout the Northeast in 1776, both the British and Americans began urging the Iroquois to join them in the conflict. In debating its options, the League of the Iroquois came apart. While outrages precipitated by American revolutionaries pushed most Iroquois over to the British side (the Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas), others (the Oneidas and Tuscaroras), influenced by the American Indian agent Samuel Kirkland, sided with the Patriots. Some historians believe this division within the Six Nations over involvement in the American Revolution precipitated a civil war among the Iroquois people. They point out that on many occasions League members fought one another in combat and pillaged each others' villages. Even those few Iroquois who refused to take sides were attacked by both the British and Americans and their Indian allies. However, other historians argue that the Revolution did not precipitate an all-out civil war among the Six Nations. Although many fought on opposing sides, they still conscientiously observed limits in their aggression toward one another by diplomatic "in-the-woods meetings" and by refusing to take each other captive. In short, they assisted the side with which they fought but not at the expense of Iroquois lives. 173

2 In the end, the American Revolution was a catastrophe for the Iroquois and other Native Americans. Patriot leaders throughout America offered lucrative bounties for Indian scalps. American troops invaded Iroquoia, burning villages, killing men, women, and children, and destroying or capturing food supplies. Hundreds starved to death, while many survivors fled to Canada. By the end of the war the Iroquois had lost their power and prestige. At least one-third of their people were dead, and the confederacy's domination of neighboring tribes was shattered. Nor did the Treaty of Paris (1783) end the war for the Iroquois and other Native Americans who were abandoned by the British and left at the mercy of land-hungry and vindictive Americans who sought to dispossess all Indians of their lands, no matter what side they had taken during the Revolution. The Iroquois lost most of their tribal lands through treaties (1784 and 1794) and subsequent sales and fraud. A similar fate befell most other tribes residing east of the Mississippi. The American Revolution was, in the words of one group of Native American leaders, "the greatest blow that could have been dealt us." Viewpoint: Yes. The American Revolution caused unprecedented internal conflict among the Iroquois and reduced the power and prestige of their confederacy. During the colonial period native peoples in North America generally fared poorly in warfare involving Europeans. By the outbreak of the American Revolution ( ), Indians had participated, often unwillingly, in at least four major colonial wars and countless smaller conflicts involving French, Dutch, British, and Spanish armies since the establishment of Jamestown almost two hundred years before. Intermittent localized disputes between natives and colonists had similar results. Consequently, Indian societies, though still prevalent throughout the continent's Eastern seaboard, experienced a variety of devastating losses. In some cases entire villages as well as cultural norms and spiritual belief systems were eliminated. Native communities precipitously declined, and the ratio of Indian to European peoples in the region dramatically shifted. To many European American observers, North America's indigenous inhabitants were quickly, and thankfully, receding as an obstruction to colonial development. A major counterpoint to this theory of Indian retreat manifested itself through the group collectively known as the Iroquois. While enduring the same settler-generated difficulties as other tribes, the Iroquois stood out in 1775 because of the continued resilience, unity, and power they exhibited. Few other native peoples enjoyed the relative political, economic, and military self-sufficiency of this confederacy. Indeed, few colonial governments of the time matched the League of the Iroquois in stability. Among the assorted peoples inhabiting Northeastern North America in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Iroquois surpassed almost all in terms of perpetual independence. In this sense, the Iroquois functioned as a frustrating and ever-present example of native resistance to expansionist settlers. Within a decade, however, the American Revolution radically changed this situation. The War for Independence precipitated internal conflict among members of the Iroquois confederacy on a scale never previously seen. At the same time, it reduced Iroquois influence over neighboring Indian peoples, irrevocably transforming power structures and alliance systems from the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes. Despite enduring dozens of previous European conflicts without destruction, the League of the Iroquois ceased to exist as an influential body because of the war and its ramifications. The American Revolution served as a catalyst for societal fragmentation among the Iroquois peoples. In the words of historian Colin G. Galloway, "For the Iroquois the Revolution was a war in which, in some cases literally, brother killed brother." The discord and divisions caused by the American Revolution are remarkable considering the internal unity enjoyed by the League of the Iroquois during previous centuries. Created sometime between 1570 and 1600, this confederacy of six tribes Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Tuscaroras originated from a desire by Northeastern native peoples to end ongoing cycles of clan feuding and intertribal violence. Upon founding the League, members agreed to renounce such conflicts, unify in diplomatic negotiations with outsiders, and coordinate military strategies for mutualdefense purposes. The confederacy established a "capital" among the geographically-centered Onondaga that served as a home to a ritually preserved symbolic fire of unity. Member delegates would meet at the site to resolve internal grievances and establish pan-tribal policies. These agreements, along with Iroquois practices of adoption and military expansion, allowed the confederacy to spread its influence from New England to the Ohio River, incorporating the 174 HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

3 Delawares, Miamis, Shawnees, Ottawas, Chippewas, Potawatomies, Wyandots, and other native peoples into its diplomatic and economic spheres. Though participant groups generally retained control of their community affairs, disputes did arise among members of the confederacy on several occasions. Nevertheless, until the American Revolution, most disagreements were resolved within the League and no tribe ever chose or was forced to withdraw. Such historical realities meant little to either the British or rebellious colonists once shots were fired at Lexington and Concord in April Despite early Iroquois proclamations of neutrality in the conflict, both combatant groups immediately exerted themselves to persuade the confederacy to choose sides. Continuous pressure, past grievances, economic incentives, and defensive concerns soon provoked fissures in Iroquois consensus. Onondagas began disagreeing with Cayugas, Mohawks argued with Senecas, and, further complicating allegiances, Oneidas quarreled with Oneidas. A European missionary residing among the Iroquois at the time noted that a "debate so warm & contention so fierce" had not occurred within the confederacy "since the commencement of their union." Though historians still disagree as to exactly why, the symbolic fire of unity at the capital in Onondaga was extinguished in 1777, providing, at the least, a foreboding sign of danger and disharmony to members of the League. By the end of the year, most Mohawks, Senecas, and Cayugas supported the British, the majority of Tuscaroras favored the revolutionaries, and the Oneidas had split into two factions. Only the Onondagas desperately tried to follow the original neutral stance. Yet, peace had receded as a viable option. Along with British and Rebel authorities, Iroquois who had decided to take part in the war began to harangue remaining enclaves of neutral Indians within the confederacy, insisting that they make a decision and declare themselves "for one side or the other." The growing acrimony within the League was clearly seen in council meetings, forums traditionally used to resolve disputes and maintain peace. At a meeting in the fall of 1775 Iroquois headmen called for all Indians under the League's influence to abstain from participation in the war. White Eyes, the leader of the Delaware tribe, defiantly renounced the League's authority and proclaimed his people's independence in terms of the path it chose to take, a brazen disavowal of Iroquois power rarely seen prior to the American Revolution. During a council ceremony in March 1777 Cayuga representatives berated the Oneidas present for destroying Iroquois harmony by supporting the rebellious colonists. When the Cayugas offered to send a peace mission to the colonists to help extricate their fellow Iroquois from the alliance, the Oneidas hotly protested and, after three days of recriminations and debate, told the Cayugas to go home. Later that summer intraleague tensions again surfaced, this time involving more confrontational language. During a council where wartime allegiances were being disputed, Joseph Brant, a Mohawk leader, openly called the neutrality-supporting Seneca headman, Cornplanter, a coward, leading to temporary anarchy and the premature end of the meeting. Rather than reach a compromise, Brant expanded the scope of his insult once the council resumed, declaring that all pacifists in the League were cowards. Traditional modes of ensuring Iroquois harmony ceased to have the customary effect. Verbal disagreement paled in comparison to the Iroquois civil war that took place on the battlefields. On multiple occasions League members faced one another in combat with deadly results. At the Battle of Oriskany, New York, on 6 August 1777 the British and their Mohawk and Seneca supporters clashed with rebellious colonists and their Oneida allies, leading to the deaths of more than one hundred Iroquois warriors. After the battle groups of Mohawks, outraged at the perceived treachery of their fellow League members, attacked Oneida villages, in the process burning down lodgings, plowing under crops, and dispersing cattle. Cognizant of the destruction taking place among the Iroquois, European Americans exacerbated the tensions, many seeing advantages to the confederacy's implosion. Some British and colonial leaders, including Thomas Jefferson, believed that inciting civil disputes among the Indians furthered the cause of the Rebels. By the latter half of 1779 traditional battles and guerilla warfare had taken their toll, achieving the results many Europeans and Americans desired. Most Mohawk, Onondaga, and Cayuga villages had been burned to the ground, and only two remained standing among the Seneca. Towns left intact, especially those of the Oneidas and Tuscaroras, were abandoned by their inhabitants out of fear of reprisals from refugee Iroquois. After less than four years of fighting, ideological differences among League members had resulted in the physical devastation of the confederacy's territory. As the Revolutionary War ended, the battered landscape symbolically reflected the political disintegration of the confederacy. Survival became the main preoccupation of the Iroquois. Displaced peoples attempted to subsist in the ruins of their destroyed homes or crowd into the few remaining villages, exhausting the scarce HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 175

4 resources. Eventually, many survivors migrated north into Canada or west into the present-day states of Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Not only did the confederacy itself split but individual member tribes also fractured. Some Oneidas moved west, others relocated to Canada, and a tiny remnant stayed in their ravaged homeland. Viewing the Iroquois as defeated and thus conquered peoples, negotiators of the new United States insisted on harsh terms in the postwar peace treaties. Though most Iroquois rejected this scenario, continued factionalism among League members undermined a coordinated defense. Still resentful over wartime loyalties, confederacy representatives bickered with one another instead of presenting a united front, a situation exploited by U.S. officials. The result was the signing of a 1784 treaty in which the Iroquois ceded to the United States most of their lands in western New York, Pennsylvania, and the ill-defined areas south of Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan. Regardless of ongoing native opposition to what many believed were unfair terms, the net effect was the reduction of Iroquois lands in the United States to several small reservations in Western New York. Even then, internal Iroquois rivalries generated by the war continued to persist. Dissension among the Iroquois and the League's inability to counter U.S. expansion provoked a rebellion among the various Western tribes formerly subordinate to the confederacy. By 1783 Miamis, Shawnees, Delawares, Potawatomies, Chippewas, and Wyandots had determined that they could better control their fates in regard to settlers and thus increasingly disavowed Iroquois authority. Eventually, Indians living south of the Great Lakes formed their own confederacy. While similar in purpose to the League of the Iroquois, the new Northwestern confederacy emphasized its independence and minimal ties to the older entity. The contrary goals of the two groups soon became clear. In the new confederacy's negotiations with U.S. officials, the Iroquois tended to side with the Americans. Ironically, Brant, the Mohawk leader who had vigorously opposed Rebel forces during the Revolution, at one point counseled the Western tribes to consent to U.S. demands. Disgusted by what they perceived to be wholesale Iroquois acquiescence to American wishes, members of the Northwestern confederacy condemned the efforts of the older League, throwing their proposed treaty documents into the fire and proclaiming Brant and his associates to be cowardly. The Western Indians' hostility toward the Iroquois was so great that negotiators returning to New York believed themselves fortunate to leave the treaty grounds without being accosted. Most hurried home, stopping only to eat and sleep, out of fear that warriors from the Northwestern confederacy would attack them along the way. 176 HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

5 Decimated in terms of land and population, the Iroquois became increasingly marginalized and resentful. Disputes generated as a result of the American Revolution influenced Iroquois politics into the nineteenth century. Moderates and civil chiefs lost influence to militants and war leaders. Those involved in treaty negotiations became pariahs in their own communities. Pro-American leaders such as Cornplanter feared for their lives on a daily basis, often refusing to accept meals from former Indian allies because of concerns of being poisoned. Geographical separation fostered more disunity. Iroquois refugees who traveled to Canada created new communities in environments often different from those left behind, in terms of topography and subsistence. While attempts were made to maintain bonds across national boundaries, old disputes, communication problems, and divergent objectives led to estrangement. Eventually, a loosely connected, though essentially distinct, new confederacy emerged among Iroquois peoples in Canada. Symbolizing the complete severance of old ties, residents of the new settlements ignited their own council fire. Contrary to principles established centuries before, a single symbol of unity had been replaced by two fires, each opposed by many Iroquois. Summarizing his views on the decline of traditional bonds, growing negative influence of American society, and general disillusionment of League members in both the United States and Canada, the dejected Brant concluded that most Iroquois "had sold themselves to the Devil." Divisions had existed within the Iroquois confederacy since its inception. Rivalries appeared and receded throughout the years before None of these differences precipitated the destruction of the confederacy, however. The American Revolution, through the actions of its participants, geographic location of its battles, and concluding peace arrangements, debilitated Iroquois society on a permanent basis. Factionalism inspired by the conflict succeeded in melding old disputes between members with new antagonisms within tribes in a setting that fostered unprecedented Iroquois-on- Iroquois violence of an intensity never witnessed previously or since. The immediate result was the dismantling of a core early-american institution and restructuring of native-settler relationships from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. Less apparent at the time, but more significant as years passed, civil war among the Iroquois during the Revolutionary War helped diminish the coherence and stability of all Native American peoples living in what was then Iroquoia. -DANIEL S. MURPHREE, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT TYLER Viewpoint: No. Although Iroquois warriors fought on opposing sides during the American Revolution, they made efforts to minimize conflict with each other. The War of American Independence ( ) brought great suffering to Iroquoia. Most Iroquois villages had to be abandoned, and their inhabitants were forced to flee to wretched refugee settlements. Combat fatalities and disease claimed hundreds of lives. The end of the conflict brought only a humiliating peace settlement in which the United States unilaterally declared the Iroquois a conquered people and laid claim to most of their ancestral territory. Although some of these lands were eventually returned, Iroquois political institutions never recovered fully. The confederacy failed to reestablish its colonial-era status as a crucial diplomatic player. Historians have frequently cited an Iroquois civil war during the Revolution as a critical element of the confederacy's woes. Scholars point to the extinguished council fire at Onondaga, the Battle of Oriskany (6 August 1777), and a legacy of division and despair to argue that the Revolutionary War led the centuries-old confederacy to tear itself apart at its seams. However, labeling the American Revolution an "Iroquois civil war" obscures more than it illuminates. It fails to take into account fully the political culture of the Iroquois confederacy and distorts an understanding of why the Iroquois fought in the war at all. It also conflates the war proper with its resolution: had the war ended less decisively, or had Great Britain supported its Iroquois allies during or after the peace negotiations, a prompt reconciliation among the various nations would have been likely. Close examination of Iroquois wartime behavior suggests that, while intertribal tensions ran high, they remained under control. The Iroquois attempted to avoid direct confrontations with one another on the battlefield. On many occasions, when either the British or Americans captured hostile Iroquois warriors, their Iroquois allies sought improved conditions of confinement for the captives, if not their outright release. During the Revolution the Iroquois confederacy split roughly along national lines. While no nation was united in its allegiance, the Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas generally provided the Crown with spies, scouts, and fighting men; the Oneidas and Tuscaroras made themselves similarly useful to the Rebels. However, one should not simply assume that because these nations chose different sides that they wished to fight each other. The pattern of wartime violence HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 177

6 TAKE UP THE HATCHET At the onset of the Revolutionary War ( ). Crown officials wasted no time in trying to gauge the mood and temper of the Iroquois confederacy. On 24 July Secretary for the Colonies the Earl of Dartmouth wrote Superintendent of Indian Affairs Colonel Guy Johnson the following missive: I have already in my letter to you of the 5 th instant hinted that the time might possibly come when the King, relying upon the attachment of his faithful allies, the Six Nations of Indians, might be under the necessity of calling upon them for their aid and assistance in the present state of America. The unnatural rebellion now raging there calls for every effort to suppress it, and the intelligence His Majesty has received of the Rebels having excited the Indians to take a part, and of their having actually engaged a body of them in arms to support their rebellion, justifies the resolution His Majesty has taken of requiring the assistance of his faithful adherents the Six Nations. It is therefore His Majesty's pleasure that you do lose no time in taking such steps as may induce them to take up the hatchet against His Majesty's rebellious subjects in America, and to engage them in His Majesty's service upon such plan as shall be suggested to you by General Gage to whom this letter is sent accompanied with a large assortment of goods for presents to them upon this important occasion. Whether the engaging the Six Nations to take up arms in defense of His Majesty's Government is most likely to be effected by separate negotiation with the chiefs or in a general council assembled for that purpose, must be left to your judgement, but at all events as it is a service of very great importance, you will not fail to exert every effort that may tend to accomplish it, and to use the utmost diligence and activity in the execution of the orders I have now the honor to transmit to you. Source: E. B. O'Callaghan, ed.. Documents Relative to the Colonial History ol the State of New-York, 15 volumes (Albany: Weed. Parsons ), Vlll:596. was clear: Iroquois warriors were far more likely to attack non-indian targets than Indian ones. Because the Iroquois polity functioned on the basis of consensus and lacked coercive power, divisions within the confederacy or within individual nations were not uncommon. Speakers at Iroquois councils declaimed the merits of their positions and attempted to persuade others to follow. Between speeches at the council fire and lobbying behind the scenes, something approximating a consensus usually emerged. However, Iroquois leaders lacked the authority to demand acquiescence. All parties ultimately reserved the right to act as they saw fit. If no agreement was reached, the passage of time would prove whose policy worked best. This tendency to split into factions was promoted by intractable problems such as the steady encroachment of European settlers. As a result, during the century leading up to the French and Indian War ( ), fragmentation had become the norm rather than the exception. The Iroquois had been divided into pro-french, pro-english, and sometimes even neutralist groups. Yet, rather than weaken the confederacy, this pattern actually strengthened it. As long as both France and Britain vied for control of the North American continent, they needed Iroquois support. As long as Iroquois allegiances were divided and shifting, they were able to play the European powers off one another. The Europeans accordingly expended large quantities of trade goods to win Iroquois allies and had to think twice before attacking Iroquois foes. In sum, the Six Nations turned the dictum of "united we stand, divided we fall" on its head and prospered. Thus, the significance of a division among the Iroquois in the American Revolution should not appear as evidence in itself of a fatal cleavage. After 1775, as the dispute between Great Britain and the colonists turned into open war, neutrality was the official confederacy policy. The Revolution was a conflict among whites, a "family quarrel," and the Iroquois saw no place for themselves in it. Uppermost in the minds of all Iroquois was the preservation of their sovereignty and their homelands. Their own family was not quarreling, at least not yet. However, geography influenced the various nations' perceptions of the developing conflict. The Westernmost nations, the Senecas and Cayugas, were physically much closer to other Indian nations such as the Chippewas, and the British stronghold at Niagara, than to colonial population centers. From this vantage point, they saw fewer reasons to jettison the common wisdom that the Crown would be able to subdue the colonists, whom the Iroquois perceived as land hungry and violent. At the other end of Iroquois territory were the Mohawks. They had already lost their land, and now a decisive British victory appeared to be their only chance to regain any part of it. Moreover, as was the case with the Senecas, Great Britain maintained an important center of imperial administration in their midst. Thus, much of the information they received was mediated by sources biased toward Great Britain. Not least of these sources was Mohawk war chief Joseph Brant. He had family ties to British officials and had recently visited Britain and met the King. Brant had been deeply impressed by what he had seen and returned with the conviction that the world's most powerful nation could not be defeated by such lowly upstarts as the American colonists. The Oneidas and Tuscaroras, by contrast, lived on the front line of white settlement. Sheer 178 HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

7 proximity made them acutely aware of Rebel potential and their own villages' vulnerability. Nearby Patriot communities made little secret of their suspicions about their Indian neighbors as well as their willingness to take action against them. If there were violence, the Oneida and Tuscarora villages were clearly in harm's way, so these two tribes were under considerable pressure to avert any action that would antagonize the Patriots. Their principal source of information was a Presbyterian missionary who was an active supporter of the Rebel cause. For their part, the Onondagas were somewhat insulated from both sides. Neutrality initially appeared viable to them, and that tendency was reinforced by their position as the confederacy's central nation, its nominal leader and mediator, and keeper of the symbolic council fire. Throughout 1776 and early 1777 Rebels and Tories both cajoled and threatened the Iroquois. Pressure mounted from both sides for their assistance. In early 1777 the central council fire of the confederacy was declared to have been extinguished. While this event has been interpreted by some historians as an expression of mutual hostility among the Six Nations, it was in fact more immediately an act of mourning prompted by an outbreak of smallpox that decimated the Onondaga tribe. The decision not to rekindle the fire acknowledged the tensions that wracked the confederacy and interfered with the proper condoling spirit. Keeping the council fire out was a way to avoid conflict, to permit all nations to proceed as they felt necessary. It was far short of a declaration of civil war. The Battle of Oriskany in Upstate New York posed a far greater challenge to inter-iroquois relations. Postwar Seneca testimony suggests that their warriors showed up in order to appease the British who supplied them with guns and clothes. They had not expected to be involved in fighting at all, and only Brant's prodding overcame their reluctance. Whatever their motivation, thirty-odd Senecas died in the engagement, and some of these losses presumably came at the hands of the sixty Oneidas who were part of the Rebel force. Did the fighting at Oriskany herald a fratricidal Iroquois war? Had events gathered such momentum that they precipitated a civil war even if one had not previously existed? The actions undertaken in Oriskany's aftermath suggest that the battle engendered mutual hostility but also that retaliation would remain within clearly demarcated bounds. In order to redress the spiritual power deficit caused by the deaths, the Senecas executed their prisoners, but none of the prisoners were Indians. The Oneidas looted a Mohawk town, and the British-allied Indians responded in kind. These actions defined the limits of Iroquois action against their fellows: threats could be made, property could be destroyed, but no more Iroquois lives would be taken. With few exceptions, those limits were respected for the duration of the conflict. Rather than seeking out one another for retribution, the Iroquois avoided hostile encounters. At the battles of Freeman's Farm (19 September 1777) and Bemis Heights (7 October 1777), the Indian allies of Britain were nowhere to be seen. The Oneidas and Tuscaroras sent men to assist American forces in 1778, but mostly to the South where they were unlikely to encounter other Iroquois. In April 1779 when Colonel Goose Van Schaick set off to march on the main Onondaga village, he avoided recruiting Oneidas or even revealing his plans to them. Most significantly, when Major General John Sullivan marched deeper into Iroquoia that summer in order to attack the Senecas and Cayugas, he was angered by the limited Oneida support. Iroquois warriors were not inclined to fight when they encountered one another by happenstance, either. When Iroquois on opposing sides of the war did cross paths, their interactions were, if not friendly, at least tacitly cooperative. Both British and American scouting and raiding parties on the frontier usually included Indians for their tracking skills and geographical knowledge. To the eternal exasperation of white officers, whenever such parties took captives, the Indian prisoners exhibited an uncanny ability to escape. This situation was, of course, not always the case. When one of the handful of Oneidas who assisted Sullivan on his expedition was captured, he was not only killed but also hacked into pieces by other Iroquois. However, this fate was perhaps preferable to that faced by two of his non-indian companions, who were tortured before being killed. Another member of the party, a Stockbridge Indian from New England, was allowed to flee unharmed because, as one of the Indians present allegedly said, "they were at war with the whites only, and not with the Indians." If a state of civil war existed among the Iroquois, it would seem they would have pursued opportunities to strike at one another even as the Anglo-American war wound down in the New York theater. Yet, when Brant plotted a direct strike to punish the Oneidas, he had to keep arrangements generally secret from other Indians, and the plan ultimately languished as a result of their lack of support. The manner in which the war ended wrought the most lasting divisions among the Iroquois. Despite the fact that Britain had been served ably by its Iroquois allies, the Crown ignored their interests at the treaty negotiations. Britain conceded its claims to lands south of the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes from the Atlantic to the Mississippi including all of Iroquoia. No provisions were made or sought for the Iroquois's peaceable possession of their lands. For their part, the Iroquois considered HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 179

8 the British position fatuous and selfish: the Crown had ceded lands it had no power to cede. They asked why they should be expected to abide by a treaty to which they had not been a party. In the absence of British support, however, the hostile Iroquois were not in a position to resist the American pretension that they had been "conquered." When the U.S. government sent commissioners to sign a treaty with the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix, New York, in 1784, the terms were both harsh and nonnegotiable. The delegates from the hostile nations pleaded their lack of authority to redraw new boundaries as demanded by the United States but were forced to sign anyway. The Oneidas and Tuscaroras who had sided with the Patriots had no more power at their disposal than the others. While the federal commissioners at Fort Stanwix spoke to them in polite and even laudatory tones, the Oneidas's inability to temper the harsh tenor of the proceedings portended future impotence. Although the Oneidas took a forward role in most postwar negotiations between the Six Nations and the United States, they were not able to effect any change in the federal government's policy. Indeed, their powerlessness was exemplified by the speed with which New York State dispossessed them of the bulk of their lands, most of which was gone by the end of the decade. The Revolutionary War had given way to a harsh new reality. The services of Iroquois hunters and warriors were no longer in demand, and the United States was fully committed to a course of rapid Westward expansion that threatened the ancestral Iroquois homeland by allowing tens of thousands of whites to settle there. Among the Iroquois disagreements flared anew over how to respond to the situation, exacerbating old divisions. Unlike most of the colonial period two powers no longer vied for their assistance. Now the Iroquois dealt with only one nation the United States and that nation was interested in their land, not their help. In the absence of any competition for their support, their division ceased to yield any benefit. Some members of all the Iroquois nations decamped for Canada. The Senecas split over how far to accommodate the Americans, and similar divisions occurred among other nations as well. Competing council fires burned, one on each side of the border, but neither was able to exert the authority of the old one at Onondaga. The American Revolution had forced each of the Six Nations to choose sides. During the course of the conflict the Iroquois fought hard and sacrificed much to promote their respective allies' success while avoiding killing one another. Each acted under the belief that the path it chose that of the Crown or that of the Patriots was the wiser of the two available. What they were not prepared for was the fateful realization that neither path led to an acceptable destination. References -KARIM M. TIRO, XAVIER UNIVERSITY Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Calloway, "The Continuing Revolution in Indian Country," in Native Americans and the Early Republic, edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), pp Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's Press, 1999). Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1972). Francis Jennings, The Founders of America: From the Earliest Migrations to the Present (New York: Norton, 1993). Journals of the Continental Congress, , 34 volumes (Washington, B.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ). Isabel Kelsay, Joseph Brant, : Man of Two Worlds (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1984). David Levinson, "An Explanation of the Oneida-Colonist Alliance in the American Revolution," Ethnohistory, 23 (1976): E. B. O'Callaghan, ed., The Documentary History of the State of New-York, 4 volumes (Albany: Weed, Parsons, ). The Papers of Sir William Johnson, edited by James Sullivan and others, 14 volumes (Albany: University of the State of New York, ). Walter Pilkington, ed., The Journals of Samuel Kirkland (Clinton, N.Y.: Hamilton College, 1980). Karim M. Tiro, "A 'Civil' War? Rethinking Iroquois Participation in the American Revolution," Explorations in Early American Culture, 4 (2000): Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Knopf, 1969). 180 HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION