THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TREATY OF
GREENE VILLE*
BY PRESTON SLOSSON
To Voltaire is ascribed the remark that
Penn's Treaty with
the Indians was the only treaty not
sworn to and the only one not
broken. No doubt he did not intend his
epigram to be taken too
seriously, but it is tragic truth that
most treaties, whether signed
in European palaces or in rough frontier
forts, with great civilized
nations or with primitive savage tribes,
have been broken. But
if Voltaire had lived a little longer he
could have added, "There
was another treaty between American
settlers and Indian tribes-
men, made not by a Quaker but by a
soldier, which was never
broken by its authors." In the
words of Rufus King, "It was a
grand tribute to General Wayne that no
chief or warrior who
gave him the hand at Greenville ever
after 'lifted the hatchet'
against the United States."1 Other
conflicts were indeed to
arise between land-hungry settlers and
distrustful Indians, but
these were contests by other men, on
other issues and for different
frontiers.
Let us first take a look at the
background of Wayne's double
victory, in war and in peace. Thanks
largely to the efforts of
George Rogers Clark, the northwest
country had been retained
by the young American republic, and
thanks to that masterpiece
of constructive statesmanship, the
Ordinance of 1787, plans were
already on foot for its orderly
settlement. But the land was an
unconquered wilderness, the Indian
tribes were hostile and British
agents from Canada held strategic points
with their forts. On
maps the United States reached the
Mississippi; in living fact
the nation reached only the Ohio. Almost
as much as Kentucky,
the Ohio country deserved the title of
"dark and bloody ground."
Here Algonquian tribes had clashed with
Iroquois in a kind of
* Presented at the one hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the
Treaty of Greene Ville, at Greenville, Ohio, August 2,
1945.
1 Rufus King, Ohio, First Fruits of the Ordinance of 1787 (Boston, 1903), 262.