LARRY L. NELSON
Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange,
and the Invention of the Ohio Frontier
There was little rest for Alexander
McKee during the autumn of 1793.
Over the course of the preceding three
years, a loose confederation of Native
Americans from along the Maumee River
Valley had looked to their British
allies for assistance. In their campaign
to expel the United States from the
Ohio Country, the northwestern tribes
had already frustrated two American
expeditions into the region. In October
1790, troops commanded by Josiah
Harmar had retreated in disarray after
encountering unexpectedly stiff Indian re-
sistance at the headwaters of the
Maumee. In November of the following
year, the confederated tribes had
completely routed a second United States
army led by Arthur St. Clair. Now, the
tribes along the Maumee watched
with mounting concern as a third force,
with Anthony Wayne at its head,
poised itself to strike at the native
stronghold.1
Comprised of the Miami, Shawnee, and
Delaware tribes living along the
Maumee, together with individuals from
other bands who had fled to the area
after the commencement of hostilities,
the confederacy opposing Wayne was
as much a creation of McKee and the British
government as of the Indians
themselves. To be sure, the tribes
making up the coalition had voluntarily
come together for their mutual defense.
They pursued their own interests and
set their own agendas. But the aid that
McKee offered and the continued sup-
port that the British government
promised served as the glue which held the
alliance together.
Larry Nelson is site manager with the
Ohio Historical Society at Fort Meigs State Memorial.
1. This and the following two paragraphs
are based on the correspondence found in the
John Graves Simcoe Papers, (MG23 H11)
Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. See
also Earnest A. Cruikshank, ed., The
Correspondence of Lieutenant Governor John Graves
Simcoe, With Allied Documents
Relating to His Administration of Upper Canada, 5 vols.
(Toronto, 1923-31), passim; Wiley Sword,
President Washington's Indian War: The Struggle
fbr the Old Northwest, 1790-1795 (Norman, Okla., 1985); Reginald Horsman, "The British
Indian Department and Resistance to
General Anthony Wayne," Mississippi Valley Historical
Review, 49 (September, 1962), 269-90. For general studies, see
Robert F. Berkhofer, "Barrier
to Settlement: British Indian Policy in
the Old Northwest, 1783-1794," in David M. Ellis, ed.,
The Frontier in American Development:
Essays in Honor of Paul Wallace Gates (Ithaca
and
London, 1969), 249-76; Reginald Horsman,
"American Indian Policy in the Old Northwest,
1783-1812," William and Mary
Quarterly, 18 (January, 1961), 35-53; Robert S. Allen, His
Majesty's Indian Allies: British
Indian Policy in the Defense of Canada, 1774-1815 (Toronto
and Oxford, 1992), 57-87.
Cultural Mediation, Cultural
Exchange
73
McKee (born c.1735-died 1799), a fur
trader, land speculator, and agent with
the British Indian Department, played an
active role in lower Great Lakes
Anglo-Indian affairs for nearly fifty
years. Fathered by a white trader but
raised, in part, by his Shawnee mother,
McKee was equally at home in either
culture. He had lived among, traded
with, and fought along side many of the
Ohio Country tribes. As tensions between
the western tribes and the United
States flared into open warfare during
the 1790s, he met with tribal delega-
tions at his post at the foot of the
Maumee Rapids to discuss strategy, dis-
pense gifts, and offer advice. He
attempted to persuade the reluctant northern-
lake tribes to join the league. At the
same time, he worked to isolate repre-
sentatives from the accommodationist
eastern Iroquois confederacy who felt
that it would be in their interests to
avoid armed conflict. He oversaw the
shipment of military supplies and
provisions from British officials at Detroit
to his storehouse on the Maumee and
coordinated covert British military as-
sistance to the warring tribes. He
entertained American envoys and received
emissaries from the Crown. He directed
spies, interrogated deserters, and ex-
changed prisoners. American ambition,
native apprehension, and imperial as-
piration converged at the British
outpost along the rapids. In the center stood
Alexander McKee.
McKee was a cultural mediator, a
go-between who linked the native and
European worlds. For much of the last
half of the eighteenth century he had
exploited his familial affiliation and
close economic ties to both communities
to encourage trade, foster diplomatic
relations, and to forge a military alliance
between the British government and the
tribes of the Old Northwest. A
shrewd, skilled negotiator and loyal
British partisan, McKee employed his
abilities throughout his career to
reconcile Crown and native political, mili-
tary, and economic interests.2
McKee was not alone as cultural
mediator. Throughout the frontier era
many others fulfilled similar roles.
Perhaps the best known cultural mediator
working within the Ohio Country was
McKee's British Indian Department
subordinate Simon Girty, the notorious
Tory renegade. Other mediators in-
2. McKee's life may be traced in the
Papers of Alexander and Thomas McKee, (MG19
F16), Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa,
Ontario; McKee Papers, Burton Historical
Collection, Detroit Public Library,
Detroit, Michigan; and McKee Family File, Fort Malden
National Historic Park, Amherstburg,
Ontario. For published biographies of McKee, see
Walter R. Hoberg, "Early History of
Colonel Alexander McKee," Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography, 58 (January, 1934), 26-36; Walter R. Hoberg, "A
Tory in the
Northwest," Pennsylvania
Magazine of History and Biography, 59 (January, 1935), 32-41; John
H. Carter, "Alexander McKee, Our
Most Noted Tory," Northumberland County Historical
Society Proceedings, 22 (Spring, 1958), 60-75. See also Larry L. Nelson,
"Cultural Mediation
on the Great Lakes Frontier: Alexander
McKee and Anglo-American Indian Affairs, 1754-
1799" (Ph.D. diss., Bowling Green
State University, 1994); Frederick Wulff, "Colonel
Alexander McKee and British Indian
Policy, 1735-1799" (MA thesis, University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee, 1969); Patricia Talbot Davis,
"Alexander McKee, Frontier Tory, 1776-1794" (MA
thesis, Bryn Mawr College, 1967).
74 OHIO
HISTORY
cluded Girty and McKee's Indian
department colleague Matthew Elliott;
Andrew Montour, a translator and
diplomatic envoy active in western
Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio during the
mid-eighteenth century; William
Wells, a white youth captured and raised
among the Indians who fought
against Arthur St. Clair in 1791 but who
served as a spy and translator for
Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timbers in 1794;
John Slover, another captive
who returned to white society and acted
as Colonel William Crawford's guide
during his ill-fated expedition against
the Ohio tribes in 1782 and who later
narrated Henry Breckinridge's famous
account of the American commander's
death at the hands of his Indian
captors; and Abraham Kuhn, a Pennsylvania
trader who married a Wyandot woman
living near Lower Sandusky and who
became known as "Chief Coon,"
a respected tribal statesman and advisor dur-
ing the late 1780s.3
Cultural mediators played a central role
in a complex process of cultural ex-
change that took place throughout the
Great Lakes frontier. It is axiomatic
that when two cultures meet, both are
changed by the experience. But when
two diverse peoples first come into
contact, much of the encounter is mutu-
ally incomprehensible. Differences of
language, custom, and world view con-
spire to deprive both parties of
opportunities for intelligible communication
on all but the most basic level. As a
result, cultures frequently resort to what
historian Richard White has
characterized as a process of creative and expedi-
ent misunderstandings. Individuals from
each culture attempt to direct their
efforts at communication to the
perceived beliefs and social conventions of
the other. That these initial
perceptions are often false is of little conse-
quence, for out of these
misunderstandings arise shared perceptions regarding
the meaning of the encounter. The form
and significance of a cultural en-
counter, then, are predetermined only in
small measure by the cultural impera-
3. Colin G. Calloway, "Simon Girty:
Interpreter and Intermediary," in James A. Clifton, ed.,
Being and Becoming Indian:
Biographical Studies of North American Frontiers (Chicago,
1989), 38-58; Reginald Horsman, Matthew
Elliott: British Indian Agent (Detroit, 1964); Nancy
L. Hagedorn, "'Faithful, Knowing
and Prudent': Andrew Montour as Interpreter and Cultural
Broker, 1740-1772," in Margaret
Connell Szasz, ed., Between Indian and White Worlds: The
Cultural Broker (Norman and London, 1994), 25-43; Paul A. Hutton,
"William Wells: Frontier
Scout and Indian Agent," Indiana
Magazine of History, 74 (September, 1978), 183-222; Consul
W. Butterfield, An Historical Account
of the Expedition against Sandusky under Col. William
Crawford in 1782 (Cincinnati, 1873), 126-28; Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin,
"Ethnohistorical
Report on the Wyandot, Ottawa, Chippewa,
Munsee, Delaware, Shawnee, and Potawatomi on
Royce Areas 53 and 54," in Indians
of Northern Ohio and Southeastern Michigan (New York,
1974), 174, 188-89. For other studies of
cultural mediation, see Nancy L. Hagedorn, "'A
Friend to Go Between Them': The
Interpreter as Cultural Broker During Anglo-Iroquois
Councils, 1740-79," Ethnohistory,
35 (Winter, 1988), 34-59; Yohuside Kawashima, "Forest
Diplomats, The Role of Interpreters in
Indian-White Relations on the Early Frontier,"
American Indian Quarterly, 13 (Winter, 1989), 1-14; Daniel K. Richter, "Cultural
Brokers and
Intercultural Politics: New
York-Iroquois Relations, 1664-1701," Journal of American History,
75 (June, 1988), 40-67; Clara Sue
Kidwell, "Indian Women as Cultural Mediators,"
Ethnohistory, 39 (Spring, 1992), 97-107.
Cultural Mediation, Cultural
Exchange
75
tives brought to the meeting by each
party. They are also mediated to a sub-
stantial degree through the negotiated
manipulation of the encounter's specific
circumstances. As members of both
cultures interact, working relationships
are established, and through these
relationships a sense of common under-
standing emerges.4
As the encounter matures and grows more
complex, each party grows in-
creasingly reliant upon the services of
cultural mediators, individuals whose
experiences have bridged both cultures.
Always bilingual, usually related to
both societies through birth, marriage,
or adoption, and particularly adept at
transacting the affairs of each in the world
of the other, mediators become the
specialized medium through which
cultures become interconnected.
Historians Howard Lamar and Leonard
Thompson have suggested that the
frontier was a zone of cultural
inter-penetration, a region where indigenous
peoples and intruders encountered one
another and where, eventually, one or
the other imposed a cultural hegemony
over the entire area. But the frontier
was also a zone of mutual re-invention.
Europeans and natives alike volun-
tarily, indeed eagerly, adopted elements
of each other's culture. Moreover,
that adoption was always pragmatic and
highly selective. The Ohio frontier
was a new creation. Fashioned from
self-conscious choices by those engaged
in the region's myriad forms of cultural
interaction, the frontier contained
readily identifiable elements from both
Indian and white societies, but com-
bined them in ways that were new and
ingenious. Standing astride the cul-
tural divide as they guided and shaped
native and European interaction, cultural
mediators became creators as well as
creations of the Ohio frontier.5
The new world invented by the process of
cultural exchange was related to,
4. Richard White, The Middle Ground:
Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes
Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge and New York, 1991), ix-x; Jeremy
Boissevain, Friends of
Friends: Networks, Manipulators, and
Coalitions (New York, 1974), 27;
Edward Spicer,
"Types of Contact and Process of
Change," in Edward Spicer, ed., Perspectives in American
Indian Cultural Change (Chicago, 1961), 153-67; Christopher L. Miller and
George R. Hamell,
"A New Perspective on Indian-White
Contact: Cultural Symbols and Colonial Trade," Journal
of American History, 73 (September, 1986), 326.
5. Howard Lamar and Leonard Thompson,
eds., The Frontier in History: North American
and Southern Africa Compared (New Haven, 1981), 1-13; For the frontier as a zone of
cre-
ation, see James Merrell, The Indians
New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from Contact
through the Era of Removal (Chapel Hill, 1989), and James Merrell, "'The
Customs of Our
Countrey': Indians and Colonists in
Early America," in Bernard Bailyn and Philip Morgan,
eds., Strangers within the Realm:
Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (Chapel Hill and
London, 1991), 117-56. For culturally
based studies of the Ohio frontier, see White, The
Middle Ground; Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper
Ohio Valley and its
Peoples, 1724-1774 (Lincoln and London, 1992); Eric Alden Hinderaker,
"The Creation of the
American Frontier: Europeans and Indians
in the Ohio River Valley, 1673-1800" (Ph.D. diss.,
Harvard University, 1991). For summaries
of recent scholarship, see Gregory H. Nobles,
"Breaking into the Backcountry: New
Approaches to the Early American Frontier, 1750-
1800," William and Mary
Quarterly, 46 (October, 1989), 641-70, and Stephen Aron, "The
Significance of the Kentucky
Frontier," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 91
(Summer, 1993), 298-323.
76 OHIO HISTORY
yet distinct from, both native and
European precedent. The Ohio Country
was socially diverse, an intricate
cultural mosaic whose members asserted and
defended a tangled web of interconnected
national, regional, local, and individ-
ual agendas. European aims within the
region were never unified and white
stratagems frequently collapsed along
opposing national, religious, or eco-
nomic lines. Indian allegiances were
equally fragmented. Sovereign tribes
and autonomous bands independently
pursued their own self-interests through
separate, often competing policies. But
inter- and intra-ethnic cooperation
also defined social reality along the
Ohio frontier as much as inter- and intra-
ethnic rivalry. Although cultural
encounters were occasionally marked by vi-
olence, more commonly the very fabric of
everyday life instigated a peaceful
process of cultural interaction. The
Great Lakes frontier became an open, as-
similative world of shifting
relationships in constant evolution. In this
world, political loyalties and cultural
values were fluid, pragmatic, and uncer-
tain. National, ethnic, even racial
affiliation could become problematic.
Social ambivalence and cultural
interdependence were the natural by-products
of the region's inter-cultural contact,
trade, marriage, and diplomacy. Within
this world, cultural mediators took on
great importance. Able to transcend
the boundaries of nation, race, and
culture, mediators employed their skills to
facilitate, and occasionally direct, the
course of native and European interac-
tion.6
All cultural mediators share several
characteristics. First, they live within a
socially complex environment where
opportunities for intercultural contact
and exchange are likely to occur.
Secondly, they occupy a position of central-
ity within that environment. Standing at
the cultural intersections permits
the broker to manipulate the terms under
which interaction takes place.
Cultural mediators also utilize first-
and second-order societal resources.
First-order resources are those directly
controlled by the mediator. They can
include commodities, such as trade goods
or furs; specific forms of empow-
erment, such as the ability to enact or
enforce trade regulations or the author-
ity to grant access to tribal lands; and
specialized skills or knowledge such as
facility in native and European
languages and expertise in the ordinary social
customs and highly conventionalized
protocols required for trade and diplo-
macy. Contacts with other individuals,
themselves often cultural brokers who
have access to first-order assets,
constitute second-order resources. First-order
assets, when combined with an extensive
network of family members, busi-
ness associates, and personal friends,
allowed a mediator to speak not only for
Indians, but as an Indian, not only for
Europeans, but as a European, not only
for tribal authorities and colonial
officials, but as one central to the decision-
6. Colin G. Calloway, "Beyond the
Vortex of Violence: Indian-White Relations in the Ohio
Country, 1783-1815," Northwest
Ohio Quarterly, 64 (Winter, 1992), 16-26. See also
"Introduction," in Bailyn and
Morgan, Strangers Within the Realm, 1-31.
Cultural Mediation, Cultural
Exchange
77
making process on both sides of the
cultural line. The acquisition of first-
and second-order resources accorded
cultural mediators a position of great in-
fluence from which they could negotiate
the price of goods, demand a desired
quantity or insist upon a high standard
of quality for specific items, outlaw
certain products or trading practices,
prohibit or encourage trading activity at
specified locations or throughout entire
regions, and invite or evict individual
traders or groups of traders into or
from their territory.7
The fur trade was the great engine of
cultural transformation along the
western border. Commerce in pelts
supplied by Indians and trade goods ex-
changed by Europeans sparked the
creation of the interconnected net of per-
sonal relationships, business
partnerships, military alliances, and political ac-
cords that formed the institutional
framework within which native and white
encounters took place. Even on the Ohio
Valley frontier, literally at the very
edge of the British Empire, the fur
trade was a powerful, sophisticated instru-
ment of cultural and economic exchange.
Embodiments of the frontier's cul-
tural pluralism, mediators were at the
center of this process.8
The fur trade provided an impressive
array of goods destined for the western
nations. In June 1766 the eastern
trading firm of Baynton, Warton, and
Morgan invoiced Fort Pitt for a diverse
inventory that included claret, rum,
blankets, tobacco, gun flints, paint,
wampum, hatchets, brass kettles, bar
lead, thread, vermilion, lace, gun
powder, bullet molds, hunting saddles, tin
cups, jews harps, combs, knives, awls,
muskets, bed lacing, shears, ribbon,
pipes, looking glass, razors, silver
jewelry, needles, and articles of clothing
including ruffled shirts, plain shirts,
calico shirts, leggings, matchcoats, gar-
tering, and breechclouts. The following
year, the Indian department commis-
sary at the post reported that over
26,000 pounds sterling worth of merchan-
dise, including 6,500 gallons of rum,
had passed through the fort. He also
noted that over 13,000 gallons of rum
had been distributed by unlicensed
traders and that other sutlers had
exchanged up to 40,000 pounds sterling
worth of goods. In return, Fort Pitt had
taken in 10,587 pounds (weight) of
beaver pelts, 15,253 pounds of raccoon
skins, 178,613 pounds of "Fall
Skins," 104,016 pounds of
"Summer Skins," and smaller amounts of pelts
from otters, fishers, wolves, panthers,
elk, and bear.9
7. Boissevain, Friends of Friends, 147-69.
8. T. H. Breen, "An Empire of
Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-1776,"
Journal of British Studies, 25 (October, 1986), 467-99; James H. Merrell,
"'Our Bond of
Peace': Patterns of Intercultural
Exchange on the Carolina Piedmont, 1650-1750," in Peter
Wood, Gregory Waselkov, and Thomas
Hatley, eds., Powhatan's Mantel: Indians in the
Colonial Southeast (Lincoln, 1989), 198-222. For a general study, see
Carolyn Gilman, Where
Two Worlds Meet: The Great Lakes Fur
Trade (St. Paul, 1982).
9. "The Crown to Baynton, Wharton,
and Morgan For sundry goods delivered at different
Times, by order of Capt. Murray and Mr.
Alexander McKee assistant agent for Indian Affairs,
for the use of the Indians, June 12,
1766," James Sullivan, Alexander Flick, Milton W.
Hamilton, et. al., eds., The Papers
of Sir William Johnson, 14 vols. (Albany, 1921-1965), 5:
78 OHIO
HISTORY
At its most basic level the fur trade
permitted Indians simply to exchange
traditional items of native manufacture
for similar items made in Europe.
Blankets, for instance, might replace
pelts or woven mats; glass beads might
be used instead of wampum in ceremonial
belts; trade silver might substitute
for jewelry made from shell or copper;
kettles and pots of iron or brass would
serve for those earlier made of
fire-baked clay. But at a deeper, more subtle
level, the acceptance and use of trade
goods signaled a beginning of the pro-
cess of cultural change that was at the
very heart of the invented frontier.10
European travelers within the Ohio back
country often commented upon the
combination of native and European
elements that made up Indian dress.
Nicholas Cresswell, a young Englishman
who dabbled in the Ohio fur trade
just prior to the Revolution, visited
Captain White-Eyes, a Delaware head-
man, at his village on the Upper
Tuscarawas River in September, 1775. The
dress of the men at the village, noted
Cresswell,
is short, white linen or calico shirts
which come a little below their hips without
buttons at neck or wrists and in general
ruffled and a great number of small
brooches stuck in it. Silver plates
about three inches broad round the wrists of
their arms, silver wheels in their ears,
which are stretched long enough for the tip
of the ear to touch the shoulder, silver
rings in their noses, Breechclout and
Mockeysons with a matchcoat that serves
them for a bed at night . . . The women
wear the same sort of shirts as the men.
Wear their hair long, curled down the back
in silver plates, if they can afford it,
if not tied in a club with red gartering. No
rings in the nose but plenty in the
ears. Both men and women paint with
Vermilion and other colours mixed with
Bear's Oil and adorn themselves with any
tawdry thing they think pretty.11
Other observers made an explicit
connection between appearance and the
frontier's ambiguous sense of cultural
identity. In 1742 the Moravian bene-
factor and missionary Count Nicholas
Ludwig von Zinzendorf met with
Andrew Montour near Shamokin,
Pennsylvania. Zinzendorf had found
Montour, the son of a French woman and
an Oneida war chief, wearing a sky-
colored coat of fine cloth and a black
cordovan neckband decorated with silver
bugles, a red damask lapelled waistcoat,
breeches, shoes, stockings, and a hat.
The Moravian claimed that
although Montour's ears were "braided
with brass
and other wire like a handle on a
basket," and that he wore "an Indianish broad
ring of bear fat and paint" on his
face, his appearance was remarkably
246-60; "Return of the Amount of Merchandise
brought to Fort Pitt in the year 1767," Ibid., 12:
396; "Return of Peltry sent from
Fort Pitt in the Year 1767," Ibid., 397. See also Lawrence S.
Thurman, "An Account Book of
Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan at Fort Pitt, 1765-1767,"
Western Pennsylvania Historical
Magazine, 29 (September, 1946),
141-46.
10. Miller and Hamell, "A New
Perspective on Indian-White Contact," 318; James Axtell,
"The English Colonial Impact on
Indian Culture," in James Axtell, The European and the
Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of
Colonial America (Oxford, 1981),
253-54.
11. Lincoln MacVeagh, ed., The
Journal of Nicholas Cresswell: 1774-1777 (New York,
1924), 120-21.
Cultural Mediation, Cultural
Exchange 79
European and that when addressed in
French, the interpreter responded cor-
dially in English.12
It was not just Indians who adopted
white articles of clothing. Whites
quickly sought out and acquired Indian
modes of dress which they found prac-
tical and eminently suited to the
frontier environment. In the spring of 1775
Cresswell traveled from Fort Pitt to
Harwood's (Harrod's) Landing, an iso-
lated settlement on the Kentucky River,
and then back again. His traveling
companions, whom he described as a
"motley, rascally, and ragged crew,"
consisted of "two Englishmen, two
Irishmen, one Welshman, two Dutchmen,
two Virginians, two Marylanders, one
Swede, one African Negro, and a
Mulatto." "I believe there is
but two pair of Breeches in the company," re-
marked Cresswell, "one belonging to
Mr. Tilling and the other to myself.
The rest wear breechclouts, leggings and
hunting shirts, which have never
been washed only by the rain since they
were made.13
The party's native garb was no mere
costume. Culturally, Cresswell and
the men in his party were no longer
completely European. Nor, despite their
clothing, had they become Indian.
Rather, they had selectively adopted ele-
ments from native culture and retained
others of their own to re-invent them-
selves in response to the region's
intercultural contact. The men's appearance
reflected an emerging frontier identity
in which national allegiance was blurred
and ethnic affiliation diffused.
Cresswell himself was aware of how his expe-
riences along the frontier had affected
his sense of self-identity. In August
1775 he employed an Indian woman to make
a pair of moccasins, leggings,
and other clothing that he hoped to wear
on his next trip to the Ohio
Country. His selection of native attire
was not haphazard. Rather, it was in-
formed by a finely-honed appreciation
for the frontier's evolving cultural val-
ues. Warned by another English trader
that his Indian clients would be in-
sulted by a white man coming among them
wearing a hunting shirt, he also
ordered a calico shirt "made in the
Indian fashion." When he wore his new
clothes for the first time,
"trimmed with Silver Brooches and Armplates," he
claimed that "I scarcely
know myself."14
The inventive process of reciprocal,
discretionary cultural exchange occa-
sionally led to unexpected
juxtapositions of the native and European worlds.
Margaret Handley Erskine, a captive who
lived with the Ohio Shawnee from
1779 until 1784, became fond of the wife
of a village chief, Blue Pocket, dur-
ing her time with the tribe. Erskine
remembered Blue Pocket's wife, a "half
French woman of Detroit," as a
woman who enjoyed living in great style in a
12. William C. Reichel, ed., Memorials
of the Moravian Church (Philadelphia, 1870), 1:95;
see also Hagedorn, "Faithful,
Knowing, and Prudent," 57, and Paul A. W. Wallace, Indians in
Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 1968), 178.
13. MacVeagh, The Journal of Nicholas
Cresswell, 83-84, 87.
14. Ibid., 102-03.
80 OHIO
HISTORY
luxurious house furnished with curtained
beds and silver spoons. The Indian
party that captured a young Englishman,
Thomas Ridout, along the Ohio
River in 1787, gave their prisoner a
breakfast of chocolate and flour cakes as
they made their way back to their
villages on the Maumee River in northwest
Ohio. After reaching the Maumee, Ridout
lived with an "old Chief" named
Kakinathucca, his wife Metsigemewa, and
a negro slave. On Ridout's first
day with his new family, Metsigemewa
prepared breakfast by using bear's fat
to fry venison in an iron skillet,
boiling water in a copper kettle, and brewing
tea sweetened with maple sugar in a
yellow-ware teapot. When finished, she
served the meal on pewter plates and in
yellow cups and saucers matching the
teapot. David Jones, a Baptist
missionary who traveled to Indian villages
throughout east-central Ohio in 1772 and
1773, enjoyed a meal of fat buffalo,
beaver tails, and chocolate with his
Indian hosts while Nicholas Cresswell
drank tea with Captain White-Eyes and
Captain Wingenund in their cabin at
Kanaughtonhead (Gnadenhutten) in 1775.15
Native food choices reflected direct
contact with Europeans through the fur
trade, gift giving, military action (the
chocolate that Ridout was given after
his capture had been taken at the same
time that he was), and a selective adop-
tion of European crops and agricultural
practices. Lieutenant John Boyer, an
officer serving with General Anthony
Wayne along the Auglaize and Maumee
Rivers in the summer of 1794, commented
that Indian gardens within the re-
gion produced "vegetables of every
kind in abundance" and that corn fields
measuring "not less than one thousand
acres" stretched for miles along the
rich river flood plains near the Glaize,
a large Indian settlement located at the
confluence of the two rivers. Wayne
himself was amazed at the area's highly
cultivated gardens and noted that he had
never "before beheld such immense
fields of corn, in any part of America,
from Canada to Florida." In addition to
the traditional selection of corn,
beans, and squash, Indian fields throughout
the Ohio frontier frequently contained
European crops such as turnips, cab-
bage, pumpkins, cucumbers,
"Irish" potatoes (a Meso-American staple trans-
ported to the Old World by the Spanish
during the sixteenth century, spread
throughout Europe in the seventeenth
century and then introduced into Ohio
15. John H. Moore, ed., "A Captive
of the Shawnees, 1779-1784," West Virginia History, 23
(July, 1962), 291; Thomas Ridout,
"An Account of My Capture by the Shawaneses Indians,"
Western Pennsylvania Historical
Magazine, 12 (January, 1929), 10, 17.
In another example of
cultural mediation along the frontier, a
white man "about twenty-two years of age, who had
been taken prisoner when a lad and had
been adopted, and was now a chief among the
Shawanese," approached Ridout
immediately after his capture. The otherwise unidentified
mediator "stood up and said to me
in English, 'Don't be afraid, sir, you are in no danger, but
are given to a good man, a chief of the
Shawanese, who will not hurt you; but after some time
will take you to Detroit, where you may
ransom yourself. Come and take your breakfast.'"
See Ibid., 10. See also David Jones, A
Journal of Two Visits Made to some Nations of Indians on
the West Side of the River Ohio, In
the Years 1772 and 1773 (Burlington,
1774), 53; MacVeagh,
The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 111-12.
Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange 81 |
|
by the French and English in the eighteenth century), and African foods such as watermelons and muskmelons. "Regular and thrifty" orchards adjacent to Indian homes produced a cornucopia of fruits. Moreover, some tribes also raised livestock. Oliver Spencer, a captive who lived at the Glaize until 1794, claimed that the Indians along the Maumee River kept neither cattle, hogs, nor sheep. But the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger noted that several tribal bands in eastern Ohio were raising cattle because they had be- come "very fond of milk and butter," while his colleague, John Heckewelder, recorded that Indians also owned chickens and semi-domesticated pigs.16
16. Lt. [John] Boyer, A Journal of Wayne's Campaign ... (Cincinnati, 1866), 5; "Wayne to the Secretary of War, 14th August, 1794," American State Papers: Documents Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States-Indian Affairs (Washington, D.C., 1832), 1:490. The extent and wide diversity of native horticulture along the Maumee and Auglaize Rivers astounded Wayne's soldiers, eliciting nearly universal comment within the surviving journals and diaries. For representative observations, see "Isaac Paxton," in James McBride, Pioneer History ... (Cincinnati, 1871), 127; Richard C. Knopf, ed., "A Precise Journal of General Wayne's Last Campaign," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 64 (October, 1954), 284-85; Dwight Smith, ed., With Captain Edward Miller in the Wayne Campaign of 1794 (Ann Arbor, 1965), 3-4; Richard C. Knopf, ed., "Two Journals of the Kentucky Volunteers, 1793 and 1794," Filson Club Quarterly, 27 (July, 1953), 263; Reginald E. McGrane, ed., |
82 OHIO
HISTORY
In addition to agricultural practices,
the process of selective cultural re-in-
vention revealed itself in other areas
of the Ohio frontier's economy. When
the missionary David Jones began his
journey into Ohio in 1773, he traveled
well supplied with trade goods and other
useful items. Jones hoped to barter
with the region's Indians for provisions
and other supplies as he moved deep
within the Ohio back country, believing
that "these Indians as yet have not
the use of money." Jones, though,
was badly mistaken. The evangelist
learned that nearly every good or
service that he required during his trip could
only be purchased with cash. At a small
settlement north of the Hocking
River, Jones bought milk for himself and
corn for his horses "at a very ex-
pensive price." Later, he was
forced to pay twenty-five dollars for a horse and
six dollars for a guide to escort him
from the Muskingum River to the Ohio
even though, as Jones later discovered,
the guide "knew not the course."
When he tried to retain the services of
a translator for five pounds a month,
the translator easily dickered the price
up to seven pounds, causing Jones to
comment that the region's Indians
"from the greatest to the least, seem mer-
cenary and excessively greedy of
gain." Complaining that meat could not be
purchased at any price and that milk was
selling at nine-pence a quart and but-
ter for two shillings a pound, Jones
ended his journey "much discouraged ...
by hardships and want of
provisions."17
Other changes within the region's
economy were widely reflected through-
out the Ohio Country. By the early 1770s
many of the Indian communities
located along the Tuscarawas and
Muskingum Rivers had adapted to a cash
economy by becoming market-based centers
for the exchange of goods and
services. When Jones purchased milk and
corn while on his journey, he did so
from a Shawnee woman whom Jones
described as the chief of a small mixed-
band of Delaware and Shawnee families.
The woman, claimed the mission-
ary, was "esteemed very rich"
and frequently boarded travelers in a small cabin
usually occupied by her African slaves.
Moreover, she also kept a sizable
herd of cattle in order to produce both
milk and beef for sale to her guests.
"William Clark's Journal of Wayne's
Campaign," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 1
(December, 1915), 424. See also
Archer Butler Hulbert and William Nathaniel Schwarze,
eds., "David Zeisberger's History
of the Northern American Indians," Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical Society
Quarterly, 19 (Winter, 1910), 14-16;
John Heckewelder,
History, Manners, and Customs of The
Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and
the Neighboring States . . . (Philadelphia, 1876), 147, 157. Heckewelder also noted
the exis-
tence of domesticated house cats. See
also O. M. Spencer, Indian Captivity: A True Narrative
of the Capture of Rev. O. M. Spencer
by the Indians in the Neighborhood of Cincinnati . . .
(New York, 1835), 83. For Indian
orchards, see Franklin B. Dexter, ed., Diary of David
McClure, Doctor of Divinity,
1748-1820 (New York, 1899), 68. For
general discussions of na-
tive agricultural practices, see R.
Douglas Hurt, Indian Agriculture in America: Prehistory to
the Present (Lawrence, 1987), 27-41; J. Mclver Weatherford, Indian
Givers: How the Indians
of the Americas Transformed the World
(New York, 1988), particularly 79-115.
17. Jones, A Journal of Two Visits, 33,
85, 87, 99-101, 104, 108-09. See also Hinderaker,
"The Creation of the American
Frontier," 367-71.
Cultural Mediation, Cultural
Exchange 83
Likewise, in 1804 the French traveler
Constantin Francois Volney reported
that the Miami chief Little Turtle kept
a cow and made butter at his home
near Fort Wayne, but that he did not
"indulge himself in these things, but re-
serves them for the whites."18
Cultural mediators, usually European men
who had married Indian women
and who maintained either a permanent or
semi-permanent residence among
the western tribes, also played an
active part in the region's transformed econ-
omy. Jones remarked that Richard Conner,
a trader from Maryland, had estab-
lished "sort of a tavern" for
the convenience of travelers on the upper-
Muskingum. Likewise, John Irwine kept a
considerable inventory of goods
at Chillicothe, a Shawnee village near
present-day Frankfort in south-central
Ohio. Irwine sold his wares to travelers
from a log building rented from an-
other Indian who resided in the town.
Chillicothe was also the home of
Moses Henry, a Lancaster trader and
gunsmith who pursued both occupations
for native and European clients at the
village. Henry lived "in a comfortable
manner, having plenty of good beef,
pork, milk, &c.," claimed Jones. "His
generosity to me was singular, and equal
to my highest wishes."19
Commercial establishments such as these
were common throughout the
Ohio frontier. The Glaize, a community
comprised of seven distinct
Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami villages,
was clustered around a centrally lo-
cated trader's town placed at the
confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize
Rivers. Residents of this commercial
district included Englishman George
Ironsides, who maintained a substantial
log dwelling and warehouse at the
community, and a French baker named
Pirault (Perault, Pero) who supplied
bread to both Europeans and natives.
Other entrepreneurs included John
Kinzie, a British silversmith; trader
James Girty, Simon Girty's younger
brother; and two Americans, Henry Ball
and Polly Meadows, who had been
captured after Arthur St. Clair's defeat
in 1791. Meadows supported herself
by taking in laundry and sewing, while
Ball found employment ferrying
goods and individuals to the Maumee
Rapids some forty miles down river.
The same type of commercial center made
up of French and English artisans,
mechanics, and traders also existed at
Kekionga, a Miami village located at
the headwaters of the Maumee River in
present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana.20
The process of intercultural exchange
also led to an evolution in the appear-
18. This and the following paragraph are
drawn from Jones, A Journal of Two Visits, 54-55,
87-88, and Hinderaker, "The
Creation of the American Frontier," 367-71. See also C. F.
Volney, A View of the Soil and
Climate of the United States of America ... (Philadelphia, 1804),
378.
19. For Richard Conner, see also Charles
N. Thompson, Sons of the Wilderness: John and
William Conner (Indianapolis, 1937), 11-14.
20. Spencer, Indian Captivity: A True
Narrative of the Capture of Rev. 0. M. Spencer, 90-
92. Helen Hornbeck Tanner, "The
Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Community,"
Ethnohistory, 25 (Winter, 1978), 15-39; M. M. Quaife, ed., "Fort
Wayne in 1790," Indiana
Historical Society Publications, 7 (Summer, 1921), 294-361.
84 OHIO
HISTORY
ance as well as the function of Ohio
frontier communities. As early as the
1750s, European travelers within the
Ohio Country noted that the region's
Indians were living in structures
similar to European log cabins. One of the
earliest descriptions of these dwellings
was made by James Smith, an eigh-
teen year old who had been captured by a
group of Caughnewagas and
Delawares in western Pennsylvania in 1755.
During the winter of 1755-56,
Smith was with a mixed band of
Caughnewagas, Delawares, and Wyandots
when they constructed such a building
near the mouth of the Black River,
west of present-day Cleveland. To
construct the cabin, they
cut logs about fifteen feet long, and
laid these logs upon each other, and drove
posts in the ground at each end to keep
them together; the posts they tied together
at the top with bark, and by this means
raised a wall fifteen feet long, and about
four feet high, and in the same manner
they raised another wall opposite to this, at
about twelve feet distance; then they
drove forks in the ground in the centre of
each end, and laid a strong pole from
end to end on these forks; and from these
walls to the poles, they set up poles
instead of rafters, and on these they tied small
poles in place of laths; and a cover was
made of lynn bark, which will run even in
the winter season.
At the end of these walls they set up
split timber, so that they had timber all
around, excepting a door at each end. At
the top, in place of a chimney, they left
an open place, and for bedding they laid
down the aforesaid kind of bark, on which
they spread bear skins. From end to end
of this hut along the middle there were
fires, which the squaws made of dry
split wood, and the holes or open places that
appeared, the squaws stopped with moss,
which they collected from old logs; and
at the door they hung bear skin, and
notwithstanding the winters are hard here, our
lodging was much better than what I
expected.
It may be that this type of structure
represented an adaptation of the traditional
native longhouse form to European
construction techniques and materials.21
Indian-built log structures never
completely replaced longhouses and bark-
covered wigwams. The Moravian mission at
Schoenbrunn, for example, con-
tained about sixty log houses as well as
a substantial number of "huts and
lodges." But as the century
progressed, log homes became increasingly
common across the frontier. By the
1770s, many native log homes had taken
on a distinctively European character.
David Zeisberger remarked that the
Moravian Delawares living in eastern
Ohio "coming much in contact with the
whites, as they do not live more than a
hundred miles from Pittsburgh," had
21. James Smith, An Account of the
Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Col.
James Smith . . . (Lexington, 1799), 18. For descriptions of similar
buildings, see John
Heckewelder, Narrative of the Mission
of the United Brethren among the Delaware and
Mohegan Indians ... (Philadelphia, 1820), 298, and Edmund De Schweinitz, The
Life and
Times of David Zeisberger . .. (Philadelphia, 1870), 529; Spencer, Indian
Captivity: A True
Narrative of the Capture of Rev. O.
M. Spencer, 78-81. For a general
discussion, see Donald
A. Hutslar, The Architecture of
Migration: Log Construction in the Ohio Country, 1750-1850
(Athens, 1986), particularly 81-94.
Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange 85 |
|
learned to build "proper and comfortable" hewed log homes. In some cases they had even hired whites to come to their villages and build the structures for them. William Albert Galloway, a twentieth century informant who had spent much time in the late nineteenth century with the Shawnee after their removal to Missouri, claimed that the Ohio tribes had purchased axes, saws, and augers for this purpose from French and English traders throughout the frontier era.22 Finely made hewed log homes could be found in Indian communities across the Ohio Country. Zeisberger described Gekelemukpechunk (Newcomers- town) as "a large and flourishing town of about one hundred houses, mostly built of logs." When the Reverend David McClure visited Netawatwes, a village leader living there in September 1772, he commented that "Some of the houses are well built, with hewed logs, with stone chimnies, chambers & sellers. These I was told were built by the english captives in the time of the French wars." Although Netawatwes' home was the largest in the village, it was certainly rivaled by another owned by the village shaman. According to McClure, a stone-lined cellar, a stair case leading to the second story, a well- built stone chimney and fireplace, closets, and a first floor divided into several smaller rooms gave the building the appearance of an English dwelling.23
22. Hulbert and Schwarze, "David Zeisberger's History," 17-18, 380; William Albert Galloway, Old Chillicothe (Xenia, 1934), 13. 23. De Schweinitz, Life and Times of David Zeisberger, 366; Dexter, Diary of David |
86 OHIO
HISTORY
It was not just Indian homes that
resembled English buildings. Entire vil-
lages took on the appearance of European
settlements. Nicholas Cresswell
described Schoenbrunn as "a pretty
town ... regularly laid out in three spa-
cious streets which meet in the centre,
where there is a large meeting house
built of logs." Cultural
transmission, though, remained selective. Many
Indian villages retained the organic
and, to European eyes, seemingly haphaz-
ard placement of structures
traditionally seen in native communities. David
Zeisberger noted that when building
their towns, the Indians rarely considered
a "regular plan." David Jones
echoed that observation. Commenting upon
the arrangement of buildings at
Chillicothe, he remarked that there was no
more "regularity observed in this
particular than in their morals, for any man
erects his house as fancy directs."24
Mutual transculturation was also
reflected in the social customs and institu-
tions that made up the fabric of
everyday life along the Ohio frontier. In early
September 1775, Cresswell was at
Coshocton where he witnessed an Indian
dance. According to the trader, the
Indians made their music with "an old Keg
with one head knocked out and covered
with a skin and beat with sticks."
Caught up in the excitement of the
moment, Cresswell, who had been
"painted by my Squaw in the most
elegant manner," stripped off all of his
clothing except for his shirt,
breechclout, leggings, and moccasins. Joining
the dance, he moved around the campfire
"whooping and hallooing" with the
most "uncouth and antic postures
imaginable." While Cresswell danced
across the cultural divide, his Indian
associates also used music to redefine
their place within frontier society. At
Newcomerstown three days after the
dance, Cresswell listened while an
Indian made "tolerable good music" play-
ing an old tin violin. The following
evening the trader was at Gnadenhutten.
Visiting the village's chapel, Cresswell
watched an Indian convert play the
congregation's spinet piano during the
Moravian worship service.25
Everyday social conventions also showed
the influence of cultural re-inven-
tion. David Zeisberger noted that when
Indians greeted one another, they did
so by shaking hands. Charles Johnston
was with a group of settlers floating
down the Ohio River in 1790 when his
boat was ambushed by Indians lying
in wait near the shore. The attackers
quickly overpowered the vessel, killing
several of Johnston's companions and
wounding others. The survivors were
herded toward one end of the boat as the
Indians boarded, killed the wounded,
stripped the dead, and threw the bodies
overboard. Johnston was convinced
that he and the others were about to be
summarily executed. To his immense
surprise, the war party's leader
approached Johnston, took the frightened
McClure, 61.
24. MacVeagh, The Journal of Nicholas
Cresswell, 106; Jones, A Journal of Two Visits, 56;
Hulbert and Schwarze, "David
Zeisberger's History," 87.
25. MacVeagh, The Journal of Nicholas
Cresswell, 109- 12.
Cultural Mediation, Cultural
Exchange 87
American's right hand and forearm in
both of his hands and after pumping
them vigorously, exclaimed
"How-d'ye-do! How-d'ye-do!" Later, as he was
being led to his captor's home in
northern Ohio, Johnston commented that all
the Indians they met had "caught
the common salutation" and greeted each
other by shaking hands and exchanging
How-d'ye-dos. The custom seems to
have been of recent origin. James Smith
explicitly noted that in the 1750s
the Indians with whom he was familiar
did not use "how do you do," but re-
lied instead on greetings in their own
language that translated into exchanges
such as "You are my friend; Truly
friend, I am your friend," and "Cousin, you
yet exist; Certainly I do."26
Inter-cultural contact led Europeans to
incorporate Indian words and phrases
such as "squaw" and
"succotash" into their vocabularies. Native Americans
throughout the Ohio Country were equally
quick to selectively adopt
European expressions and figures of
speech. Charles Johnston noted that
while only two of the Indians in his
party could speak or understand his lan-
guage, virtually all of them cursed in
English. Oliver Spencer remembered
that when a pack horse carrying a heavy
load collapsed along a trail and re-
fused to go further, the horse's Indian
owner "began in broken English to
curse him, and after loading the poor
animal with all the opprobrious epithets
he could think of, left him lying in the
path." Likewise, Colonel William
Christian, an officer in the Virginia
Militia, reported that during the 1774
Battle of Point Pleasant, Indian
warriors came close to the American lines and
"damn'd our men often for
Sons-of-Bitches."27
James Smith claimed that the Indians
"never did curse or swear, until the
whites learned them." Furthermore,
he also stated that the Ohio Indians
would frequently use European expletives
without understanding their mean-
ing. While Smith was living with the
Ohio tribes, Tecaughretanego, one of
his Caughnewaga companions, became
angered and used the phrase "God
damn it" in Smith's presence. The
outburst offended Smith and when he ex-
plained that the expression meant
"calling upon the great spirit to punish the
object" that his friend was
displeased with, his companion first became em-
barrassed and then confused. "He
stood there for some time amazed," said
Smith,
and then said if this be the meaning of
these words, what sort of people are the
whites? When the traders were among us
these words seemed to be intermixed with
26. Hulbert and Schwarze, "David
Zeisberger's History," 115; Charles Johnston, A
Narrative of the Incidents Attending
the Capture, Detention, and Ransom of Charles Johnston, of
Botetourt County, Virginia . . . (New York,
1827), 16 and 40; Smith, An Account of the
Remarkable Occurrences, 78.
27. Johnston, A Narratives of the
Incidents, 40; Spencer, Indian Captivity: A True Narrative
of the Capture of Rev. 0. M. Spencer,
49-50. "Col. William Christian to
Col. William Preston,
15th Oct. 1774," 3QQ121, William
Preston Papers, Draper Collection, State Historical Society
of Wisconsin.
88 OHIO HISTORY
all their discourse . . . he said the
traders applied these words not only wickedly,
but often times very foolishly and
contrary to sense or reason. He said, he remem-
bered once of a trader's accidentally
breaking his gun lock, and on that occasion
calling out aloud God damn it-surely
said he the gun lock was not an object worthy
of punishment for Owaneeyo, or the Great
Spirit; he also observed the traders of-
ten used this expression when they were
in a good humour and not displeased with
any thing. I acknowledged that the
traders used this expression very often, in a
most irrational, inconsistent, and
impious manner, yet I still asserted that I had
given the true meaning of these words.
He replied, if so, the traders are as bad as
Oonasahroona, or the underground
inhabitants, which is the name they give the
devils.28
Social institutions, as well as social
customs, were re-invented in the wake
of the region's inter-cultural contact.
Native marriages were less permanent,
though no less solemn, than white
unions. According to John Heckewelder,
when Indians entered into marriage it
was understood by both partners that
they would not live together any longer
"than suits their pleasure or conve-
nience." "The husband may put
away his wife whenever he please," claimed
the evangelist, "and the woman may
in like manner abandon her husband."
European men, particularly traders and
merchants who resided in the Ohio
Country, frequently adopted the Indian
mode of marriage and took Indian
wives in the Indian fashion.29
Other Europeans occasionally attributed
the transitory nature of Indian mar-
riages and the traders' readiness to
enter into such unions to a widespread li-
centiousness among the Indians and a
general degradation of moral standards
along the frontier. David Jones, for
example, claimed that Indian women "are
purchased [by their husbands] by the
night, week, month or winter, so that
they depend on fornication for a
living," while Nicholas Cresswell described
the settlers living near Fort Pitt as
"nothing but whores and rogues." Indians,
however, and the Europeans who married
them, understood the marriage pact
differently.30
Kinship formed the fundamental basis of
native culture. Many of the activi-
ties and relationships that made up
village life as well as the trading partner-
ships and diplomatic allegiances that
defined a band's place within the broader
scope of native society were predicated
upon familial affiliation. Marriage
permitted Indians to extend political
and economic ties to the white world and
to carefully regulate the process
through which Europeans became fully ac-
cepted, integrated, and participating
members of Indian society. Natives bene-
28. Smith, An Account of the
Remarkable Occurrences, 42.
29. Heckewelder, History, Manners,
and Customs of the Indian Nations, 154. David
Zeisberger also described this type of
marital arrangement but was quick to point out that
"there are many cases where husband
and wife are faithful to one another throughout life."
See Hulbert and Schwarze, "David
Zeisberger's History," 79.
30. Jones, A Journal of Two Visits, 75-76;
MacVeagh, The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 98.
See also Dexter, Diary of David
McClure, 91.
Cultural Mediation, Cultural
Exchange 89
fited from this arrangement in several
ways. Marriage allowed tribal bands to
enforce social customs and impose
standards of behavior and formalized social
obligations upon their new European
members. Further, trade acted as a
means of preserving peaceful relations,
both between natives and whites and
between tribal bands. Marriage served to
stabilize the broad inter-cultural bond
between Indians and Europeans and to
guarantee the supply of trade goods
necessary for the maintenance of
intra-cultural alliances. Whites benefited
from the arrangement as well. The power
of these marriages to cement eco-
nomic and diplomatic relationships was
self-evident to Captain Hector
McLean, the British commander at Fort
Maiden (Amherstburg, Ontario) in
1799. According to McLean, either
"marriage or concubinage" connected most
of the officers attached to the British
Indian Department at the post to the
Ohio Valley Shawnee. Likewise, the
Indian woman who accompanied
Nicholas Cresswell while he traveled
through Ohio in 1775 made his cloth-
ing, acted as a translator, tended his
horses, prepared his camp, and undoubt-
edly arranged for him to meet the tribal
leaders with whom he frequently dealt.
Cresswell was well aware of the
importance of this woman to his success.
"However base it may appear to
conscientious people," he noted, "it is abso-
lutely necessary to take a temporary
wife if they have to travel amongst the
Indians." The transculturation of
the Ohio Country, therefore, was based
upon the exchange of individuals as well
as goods, ideas, and customs.31
Alexander McKee's father, Thomas McKee,
a western Pennsylvania Indian
trader and sometime agent with the
British Indian Department, died near his
trading post along the Susquehanna River
in 1769. Four years later John
Parrish, a Quaker missionary from
Philadelphia, and two companions traveled
through western Pennsylvania and into
the Ohio Country. Their journey
was, in part, a social one, an
opportunity too long delayed to renew friend-
ships and strengthen acquaintances
throughout the region. On July 26th, in a
small settlement west of the Ohio River,
Parrish had the extraordinary good
fortune to run into an old and dear
friend, Thomas McKee. At their meeting
McKee, after inquiring about the health
of his friends, gave Parrish and his
companions a "hearty welcome,"
invited them to accompany him, and es-
corted the group to his home.
Throughout the following week, Parrish
and his friends were entertained
with great hospitality. McKee's Indian
wife lavished her attention on them,
saw to their every comfort, and prepared
their meals from the best provisions
31. The British Indian Department was
the Crown agency charged with maintaining Great
Britain's economic and military alliance
with the Ohio Country tribes. "Captain Hector
McLean to Major James Green, August 27,
1799," Michigan Pioneer and Historical
Collections, 40 vols. (Lansing, 1877-1929), 12:305; MacVeahgh, The
Journal of Nicholas
Cresswell, 102-08, 113-14, 122. See also Dexter, Diary of David
McClure, 53; J. B. Brebner,
"Subsidized Intermarriage with the
Indians: An Incident in British Colonial Policy," Canadian
Historical Review, 6 (March, 1925), 33-36, and Merrell, "Our Bond of
Peace," 198-201.
90 OHIO
HISTORY
available at the town. By August 3rd it
was time to return. McKee, having
business to transact in Pittsburgh,
decided to accompany the Quaker and his
friends to the frontier outpost. As they
traveled up the Ohio River, they
paused at Alexander McKee's trading post
and acquired the provisions to con-
tinue their journey. The party then
continued to Pittsburgh where, according
to Parrish, McKee met with all of the
town's "men of note."32
Thomas McKee was an Indian, a Delaware
who, as a token of respect for
his friend Thomas McKee, had taken the
trader's name and retained it after his
death. James Kenny, a Pittsburgh trader,
recorded many such Indians includ-
ing Jimmy Wilson, John Armstrong, Sir
William Johnson, William
Turnum, and John Doubty, as they
bartered for provisions at his establish-
ment. European traders found Indian
names notoriously difficult to pro-
nounce, and it is likely that many of
these Indians used their European names
only to facilitate their dealings with
Kenny and the other merchants within
the region. On one occasion, for
example, Kenny noted that when a young
Indian man "having no English
name" came to trade, "I gave him my name,
which he said he would keep."
Thomas McKee's acceptance of his friend's
name, though, appears to be more than a
matter of mere convenience.33
McKee bore the outward sign of a deeper
cultural reality. The Ohio frontier
was a place of great cultural
restlessness, a setting where personal identity re-
flected the impermanence of one's
ethnic, national, or racial affiliation.
McKee was part of a world that permitted
individuals to cross racial and ethnic
barriers both symbolically and literally
with a considerable degree of intimacy
and completeness. Indeed it was a world
that allowed certain individuals to be
either Indian or European at their
discretion. The eastern woodland Indians
had long used the "mourning
war" to take revenge upon their enemies. The
mourning war was fought using
small-scale raids to acquire either Indian or
European captives. These prisoners would
later be adopted into the tribe that
had captured them to replace other
tribal members who had died from disease
or combat. After James Smith's capture,
he was bathed, dressed in Indian
clothing, painted in Indian fashion, and
brought before a council of village
leaders. Eventually, one of the tribal
elders arose and said "My son, you are
now flesh of our flesh, and bone of our
bone."
32. "Extracts From Journal of John
Parrish, 1773," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography, 16 (October, 1892), 442-48; John Lacey, "Journal
of a Mission to the Indians in
Ohio by Friends from Pennsylvania,
July-September, 1773," in William Henry Egle, Notes and
Queries: Historical, Biographical,
and Genealogical, Relating Chiefly to Interior Pennsylvania,
12 vols. (Harrisburg, 1893-1900),
7:103-07.
33. John W. Jordan, "Journal of
James Kenny, 1761-1763," Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography, 37 (January and April, 1913), 1-47, 152-201. For Thomas
McKee's
tribal affiliation, see American
Archives: Consisting of a Collection of Authentick Records,
State Papers, Debates, and Letters
and other Notices of Publick Affairs. ... In Six Series
(Washington, D. C., 1833), 4th series,
1:478.
Cultural Mediation, Cultural
Exchange 91
By the ceremony which was performed this
day, every drop of white blood was
washed out of your veins; you are taken into the
Caughnewaga nation, and initi-
ated into a warlike tribe; you are
adopted into a great family, and now received with
great seriousness and solemnity in the
room and place of a great man; after what
has passed this day, you are now one of
us by an old strong law and custom-My
son, you have now nothing to fear, we
are now under the same obligations to love,
support and defend you that we are to
love and to defend one another, therefore you
are to consider yourself as one of our
people.
Smith at first doubted the truth of what
he had been told, but later commented
that "from that day I never knew
them to make any distinction between me
and themselves in any respect
whatever." This evolving, fluid sense of per-
sonal identity shared by both Indians
and Europeans reflected the culturally
complex and pragmatic nature of the Ohio
frontier. Personal identity could be
expediently re-invented as circumstance
required. For many who lived in the
Ohio back country, racial and ethnic
affiliation became a temporary response
to altered personal relationships,
shifting political contexts, and emerging
economic opportunities.34
Indians and Europeans alike, then, had
transformed the Ohio Country and
with it themselves. An overtly
negotiated process of selective cultural ex-
change defined the encounter between
Native Americans and whites along the
Ohio frontier and had fashioned the
region into a zone of mutual re-invention.
Cultural mediators were at the heart of
this exchange. Relations between
Europeans and natives throughout the
Ohio hinterlands were always complex,
comprised of an interwoven net of
competing interests. For much of the
early frontier era, the process of
transculturation permitted both parties to rec-
oncile their differences and allowed
each to engage the other peacefully, prof-
itably, and with a degree of
understanding otherwise impossible.
34. Smith, An Account of the
Remarkable Occurrences, 10-11. See also James Axtell, "The
White Indians," in James Axtell, The
Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial
North America (Oxford and New York, 1985), 302-28; Daniel K. Richter,
"War and Culture:
The Iroquois Experience," William
and Mary Quarterly, 40 (October, 1983), 528-59.
LARRY L. NELSON
Cultural Mediation, Cultural Exchange,
and the Invention of the Ohio Frontier
There was little rest for Alexander
McKee during the autumn of 1793.
Over the course of the preceding three
years, a loose confederation of Native
Americans from along the Maumee River
Valley had looked to their British
allies for assistance. In their campaign
to expel the United States from the
Ohio Country, the northwestern tribes
had already frustrated two American
expeditions into the region. In October
1790, troops commanded by Josiah
Harmar had retreated in disarray after
encountering unexpectedly stiff Indian re-
sistance at the headwaters of the
Maumee. In November of the following
year, the confederated tribes had
completely routed a second United States
army led by Arthur St. Clair. Now, the
tribes along the Maumee watched
with mounting concern as a third force,
with Anthony Wayne at its head,
poised itself to strike at the native
stronghold.1
Comprised of the Miami, Shawnee, and
Delaware tribes living along the
Maumee, together with individuals from
other bands who had fled to the area
after the commencement of hostilities,
the confederacy opposing Wayne was
as much a creation of McKee and the British
government as of the Indians
themselves. To be sure, the tribes
making up the coalition had voluntarily
come together for their mutual defense.
They pursued their own interests and
set their own agendas. But the aid that
McKee offered and the continued sup-
port that the British government
promised served as the glue which held the
alliance together.
Larry Nelson is site manager with the
Ohio Historical Society at Fort Meigs State Memorial.
1. This and the following two paragraphs
are based on the correspondence found in the
John Graves Simcoe Papers, (MG23 H11)
Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. See
also Earnest A. Cruikshank, ed., The
Correspondence of Lieutenant Governor John Graves
Simcoe, With Allied Documents
Relating to His Administration of Upper Canada, 5 vols.
(Toronto, 1923-31), passim; Wiley Sword,
President Washington's Indian War: The Struggle
fbr the Old Northwest, 1790-1795 (Norman, Okla., 1985); Reginald Horsman, "The British
Indian Department and Resistance to
General Anthony Wayne," Mississippi Valley Historical
Review, 49 (September, 1962), 269-90. For general studies, see
Robert F. Berkhofer, "Barrier
to Settlement: British Indian Policy in
the Old Northwest, 1783-1794," in David M. Ellis, ed.,
The Frontier in American Development:
Essays in Honor of Paul Wallace Gates (Ithaca
and
London, 1969), 249-76; Reginald Horsman,
"American Indian Policy in the Old Northwest,
1783-1812," William and Mary
Quarterly, 18 (January, 1961), 35-53; Robert S. Allen, His
Majesty's Indian Allies: British
Indian Policy in the Defense of Canada, 1774-1815 (Toronto
and Oxford, 1992), 57-87.