The War That Made America

Teedyuscung’s venture, bold as it was, would in all likelihood have failed before the Easton negotiations of 1758 could have begun had it not been for the intervention of General John Forbes. The resolute Scot was determined to use every means necessary to accomplish his mission of dislodging the French from Fort Duquesne and restoring peace to the central colonial frontier. A man of great perception and intelligence, Forbes knew that to succeed he would have to skirt the two great pitfalls that had doomed Braddock three years before. The first, overextension in the hope of a speedy victory, was solely military and consequently easy—if expensive and time-consuming—to avoid. He planned to build a new road to Fort Duquesne through the center of Pennsylvania, with substantial forts every forty or fifty miles and blockhouses between them at intervals of a day’s march. These would stabilize the army’s supply system, secure its communications with the east, and provide defensible positions to fall back to in case the enemy launched an attack like the one that had destroyed Braddock.

Braddock’s second trap, the lack of Indian allies, was harder to avoid. Unlike the building of a well-secured wagon road, Indian diplomacy depended on factors Forbes could not control. The willingness of the Indians themselves to cooperate was of course the greatest of these variables, and—insofar as it depended on the natives’ own calculations of self-interest and advantage—the least tractable. But there was an administrative hurdle to overcome as well: Sir William Johnson, the sole officer of the crown authorized to conduct Indian diplomacy in the northern colonies, had deep personal and economic ties to the Six Nations and was unlikely to do anything inimical to Iroqouis interests. The treaty Denny had negotiated with Teedyuscung in 1757 was, technically speaking, of dubious legitimacy because Johnson and the Iroquois (whom the crown, as well as the Penns, recognized as the Delawares’ suzerain) had not taken part in the negotiations. It was only the manifest advantage of securing peace with the eastern Delawares and the potential benefit of using Teedyuscung to reach a similar accommodation with the Ohio Indians that had made London willing to look the other way. General Forbes, sizing up the situation after his arrival in Philadelphia, understood the advantages of developing ties with Denny, Teedyuscung, and Pemberton, and set out to cultivate them all, irrespective of Johnson and the Iroquois.

That May, Pemberton and the Friendly Association responded to Forbes’s interest in their efforts by dispatching an agent, the Delaware-speaking Moravian preacher Christian Frederick Post, to the Wyoming Valley. Their intent was merely to press Teedyuscung to make further contacts with the Ohio Delawares. Post, however, discovered that the contacts he had hoped to promote were well advanced: an eminent western Delaware chief, Pisquetomen, had come to Wyoming at Teedyuscung’s invitation, and was professing an interest in negotiating peace with the English. When Post returned to Philadelphia together with Teedyuscung and Pisquetomen, Forbes immediately pressed Denny to undertake negotiations, with or without Johnson. After some hesitation Denny agreed, sending Post and Pisquetomen back to the Ohio country with an offer of peace and an invitation to negotiate directly with Pennsylvania at a treaty conference to be held in Easton, in October.

Johnson did not take being circumvented lightly, but Forbes foiled his efforts to fight back by appealing to General Abercromby (who as commander in chief was Johnson’s superior as well as Forbes’s) for authorization to proceed without Johnson’s participation. Abercromby, desperate for successes anywhere following the bloody fiasco of Fort Carillon, agreed on July 23, just days after authorizing Bradstreet’s expedition against Fort Frontenac. By that time Post and Pisquetomen were halfway to the Ohio country, and Forbes’s principal commander, Colonel Henry Bouquet, was well along with the construction of the new road; yet Abercromby’s permission to proceed was vital because it deprived Johnson of any grounds for protest.

Thus while Forbes’s men hewed and sawed and graded and leveled their way slowly west through Penn’s woods, Pisquetomen and Post advanced the most powerful arguments they could think of for peace around council fires in villages along the Allegheny, the Ohio, and their tributaries. The various Indian groups were divided in their councils, with some of the Delawares favoring peace strongly enough to suspend raids on the Anglo-American frontier, while a majority of the Shawnees continued to accompany parties sent out to harass Forbes’s expeditionary force on the road. Even so, Fort Duquesne’s commander could no longer conceal his waning stock of trade goods—a weakening of his position that increased the influence of chiefs who advocated abandoning the French and making peace. Six weeks of intense parleys convinced Pisquetomen that he could return to Easton and negotiate for peace with some confidence that the Ohio peoples would abandon the French alliance—provided that the English would open a trading post at the Forks on fair terms, while prohibiting permanent white settlement in the region. If the English were willing to promise those things to Pisquetomen, the Ohio Indians could look forward to the independence they had longed for decades to establish.

On September 8 Post and Pisquetomen left the Ohio country for Shamokin, where Teedyuscung’s band had located near a new Pennsylvania provincial post, Fort Augusta. From there Pisquetomen headed for Easton, while Post made his way to General Forbes’s headquarters at Fort Bedford. By this time Colonel Bouquet’s advance force had cut the road nearly fifty miles farther west to Fort Ligonier, which lay at the foot of Laurel Ridge, the last great obstacle before Fort Duquesne. With so much progress made, Forbes should have been a happy man, but Post found him distressed, doubtful, and sadly debilitated. The three hundred or so Cherokee Indian allies whom the governor of South Carolina had procured for him had abandoned the expedition several weeks earlier, leaving him without scouts, and hence without intelligence of French movements.⁶

Forbes had lately encountered another kind of opposition, as well, in the form of a campaign by the colonels of the two Virginia provincial regiments to persuade him to redirect the road-building south to link up with the old Braddock Road. George Washington and William Byrd had both argued that, given the topography of the Pennsylvania route, the campaign might not reach Fort Duquesne before winter would bring a halt to all operations. Forbes suspected their real interest was to keep Pennsylvanian speculators and settlers from horning in on an Ohio Valley that they wanted to make Virginia’s private preserve, and had upbraided them for valuing “their attachment to the province they belong to” above “the good of the service.” But delays owing to bad weather and a major setback on September 14 made him wonder if perhaps Byrd and Washington had a point; perhaps the campaign would have to be postponed until the following year after all. In that case he had reason to doubt that he would see the completion of his mission, for his bowel disorder, weakness, and pain were now such that he could barely do more than walk from his bed to his desk and write letters.

Not long after Post arrived, Forbes learned that Bouquet had detached a 750-man party on September 9, to make a reconnaissance-in-force of Fort Duquesne. Astonishingly, this body, largely made up of Highlanders and other regulars under Major James Grant, reached the fort undetected, only to become dispersed in the woods on the night of September 13. Early the next morning Grant ordered a piper to play, summoning them to assemble. Even as they responded, however, Indian warriors streamed from the fort and attacked. In the uneven battle that followed, Grant was taken prisoner and three hundred of his men were killed, wounded, or captured. Because the troops who escaped could fall back to a secure haven at Fort Ligonier, Grant’s defeat amounted only to a humiliating setback, not a fiasco on the scale of Braddock’s. Forbes, however, took little comfort in this demonstration of the fundamental soundness of his approach. The campaigning season was growing late, and he feared the worst.

A Plan of the Environs, Fort, and Encampments of Raystown, 1758. Following his journey to the Ohio with the Delaware chief Pisquetomen, Christian Frederick Post conferred with the British commander John Forbes at the commander’s advance headquarters at Raystown. This plan by the British military draftsman John Cleve Pleydell shows Fort Bedford and encampments of British, American, and Cherokee forces near Juniata Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna. (The Royal Collection © 2005, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)

Post’s arrival with news that a diplomatic breakthrough might yet bring the campaign to a successful end revived Forbes’s flagging hopes. He quickly wrote to the Pennsylvania delegation at Easton, instructing them to lose no time in making peace. Pisquetomen’s demands, he thought, were reasonable, and “giving up sometimes a little in the beginning will procure you a great deal in the end.” He directed that Pemberton and the Friendly Association, who had “the publick good and the preservation of these provinces” at heart, should be allowed to participate as well—a move by which he intended to benefit Teedyuscung, and ensure that the integrity of the proceedings would be as high as possible. Then he asked Post to carry these instructions to Easton, remain there until peace had been concluded, and then return to the Ohio country with Pisquetomen, carrying the news. Post, a hardy soul as well as a brave one, did as Forbes wished.

The conference at Easton was large, with more than five hundred natives from thirteen nations in attendance, including Teedyuscung’s eastern Delawares, Pisquetomen’s Ohioans, all of the Six Nations, and a variety of smaller Iroquois clients. Among the Anglo-American representatives were the governors of Pennsylvania and New Jersey (sponsors of the proceedings), as well as other officials from their governments, George Croghan (acting as Sir William Johnson’s chief deputy), and Israel Pemberton and other members from the Friendly Association. All had come with different interests to pursue. Teedyuscung and his people wanted to have the promised inquiry into the Walking Purchase begun, and have their right to several thousand square miles of land in the Wyoming Valley officially established. The chiefs of the Six Nations and Croghan had come to quash the inquiry, to reassert control over Teedyuscung, and if possible to renew Iroquois claims to sovereignty over the Ohio country. Pemberton and his associates wanted to protect Teedyuscung and to see to it that the Penns allocated sufficient lands to compensate his people for their Walking Purchase losses. Governor Denny had come to preserve the lands and interests of the Penn family, as well as to negotiate a peace settlement with Pisquetomen and the Ohio Indians. Prior to Post’s arrival on October 20, the maneuvering among these groups and their interests had been intense but inconclusive. Forbes’s letters clarified matters by informing Governor Denny, in no uncertain terms, the his highest priority must be to make peace with the Ohio Indians.

So illuminating indeed were Forbes’s instructions that it took less than four days from the time Post arrived for Denny to conclude peace with the Ohio Indians. The agreement was based on Pisquetomen’s pledge that English captives would be returned and secured by the governor’s solemn promise, on behalf of the Penns and the province, that they would henceforth deal directly with the Delawares by “kindl[ing] up again” William Penn’s “Old Council Fire” at Philadelphia. Pennsylvania traders would open a trading post at the Forks, Denny promised; he also agreed, on behalf of the crown, that white farmers would be forbidden to settle on lands west of the Alleghenies after the war.

This great result, for which Forbes had so fervently prayed, also had the effect of undercutting Teedyuscung’s bargaining position. Forbes seems not to have intended that it should have been so, but once Pisquetomen spoke on behalf of his people, Teedyuscung (who had already made peace) forfeited all leverage as an intermediary. This gave the chiefs of the Six Nations all the opening they needed to reassert control over the upstart Teedyuscung by claiming jurisdiction over his band on the Susquehanna, a claim that Croghan supported, Pisquetomen and Pemberton did not oppose, and Denny promptly recognized.⁷ The leading Iroquois councillor then instructed Teedyuscung to return to the Wyoming Valley, without offering any guarantee that the League would ratify the creation of a permanent reservation there. Isolated and impotent, Teedyuscung went home knowing that he had lost most of what he had hoped to gain, and that what remained was no longer under his control. In the following year the Privy Council would respond to the allegations of fraud in the Walking Purchase by referring the case to Sir William Johnson for review, and would assign the decision on establishing a Wyoming Valley reservation for the Delawares to the Grand Council of the Iroquois League.

There was nothing that the Iroquois could do, at least for the time being, to assert control over the Ohio Indians. Governor Denny had recognized Pisquetomen as their spokesman and promised to deal with the Delawares directly in the future. Nonetheless, the Penn family’s personal representatives at the conference cannily agreed to rescind an irregular cession of Iroquois rights to all lands within Pennsylvania’s limits that a Mohawk diplomat had made to Conrad Weiser at the Albany Congress of 1754. This resumption of title by the Iroquois, together with a deed of release that established a boundary between the lands of the League and those of the Penns within the province, effectively returned the lands of the upper Ohio to the League’s control. Given Denny’s agreement to deal directly with the western Delawares and the fact that only a relatively small part of the upper Ohio Valley lay within Pennsylvania’s limits, the native peoples of the region could believe that this act did not make them once more into wards of the League. Yet the Penn family’s retrocession of title to the upper Ohio gave the League a foundation on which it could hope to rebuild its claims to sovereignty over the whole valley and its inhabitants.

The Treaty of Easton, concluded on October 25 and 26 with the customary ceremonies of feasting and gift-giving, was the most important diplomatic agreement in North America since the Grand Settlement of 1701. Forbes could now proceed with confidence—provided that word of peace could be relayed to the peoples of the Ohio and his army could cross the last miles to Fort Duquesne before winter weather brought the campaigning season to a close. Post and Pisquetomen hastened to his headquarters to deliver the news. They found him at Fort Ligonier on November 7. There the emissaries paused only long enough for the general to write letters to the Ohio chiefs, embracing them as friends and inviting them to stand aside while his army dealt with the French. Then Pisquetomen and Post made the last, most perilous leg of their journey, arriving just as warriors were returning from a November 12 raid on Forbes’s army that had inflicted numerous casualties and destroyed more than two hundred draft animals, but had failed to dislodge the Anglo-Americans from Fort Ligonier. To Post it was clear that “the people who came from the slaughter . . . were possessed with a murdering spirit,” to such a degree that he feared they would act on the entreaties of the French officers at Fort Duquesne “to knock every one of us messengers on the head.”

In the end, however, it was clear to the Ohio chiefs that the British had offered peace on terms that seemed to guarantee their political autonomy, an acceptable supply of trade goods, and a prohibition on settlement in the region by white farmers. The French, by contrast, were too weak to defend Fort Duquesne themselves and could no longer provide trade goods sufficient to sustain their alliances. They had no hope of surviving a confrontation with the great British force that was now bearing inexorably down on the Forks. Lacking any strategic or political reason to cling to a French alliance, the native peoples of the upper Ohio Valley stood aside.

Fort Duquesne cannon breech. This iron breech section from an eighteenth-century cannon was found at Pittsburgh near the site of Fort Duquesne during construction activity in the nineteenth century. It was probably incapacitated and abandoned by French forces during the evacuation of Fort Duquesne in November 1758. (Courtesy of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania)

The commandant of Fort Duquesne, Captain François-Marie Le Marchand de Lignery, had lost essentially all of his Indian allies from the Great Lakes and the west in September. Following the defeat of Major Grant’s force, the Indians had taken their captives, plunder, and trophies and returned home to hunt for their families’ winter provisions. Without support from the resident Indian groups, Lignery had only a weak garrison—three hundred militiamen and troupes de la marine, the majority of whom were sick or otherwise unfit for combat—to stand off Forbes’s army of five thousand well-equipped, well-supplied men. Faced with an impossible situation, Lignery ordered the fort’s cannon loaded on bateaux to be rowed downstream to the Illinois settlements. On November 23, he and his remaining soldiers set Fort Duquesne’s buildings ablaze and exploded a gunpowder mine to level the walls. Then, waiting just long enough for Lignery to be sure that “the fort was entirely reduced to ashes,” they paddled up the Allegheny to Fort Machault. There Lignery kept his hundred healthiest men for the winter, to await reinforcements and retake the Forks in the spring. The English, he knew, would be able to leave only a small winter garrison behind. With even modest numbers of Canadian militia, troupes de la marine, and Indian allies, Lignery stood an excellent chance of regaining what he had lost.

Forbes’s army was ten miles away when Lignery detonated the charge that flattened Fort Duquesne. On the evening of November 24, Anglo-American scouts reported that they had seen “a very thick smoak from the Fort extending in the bottom along the Ohio.” The next day Forbes and his men took control of the Forks. After four years of suffering and destruction, the war on the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers was over—at least for the time being.