Ohio History Journal

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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TREATY OF

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.