Library Research UPA American Studies Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789 General Editor: Alden T. Vaughan, Professor Emeritus of Early American History, Columbia University The almost two centuries that preceded the implementation of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 were the formative years of Indian-white contact in America. European colonists and American Indians evolved basic patterns of coex- istence—sometimes harmonious, often contentious—that lasted with few fundamental changes until the twentieth century. Those patterns continue to influence governmental policies and judicial decisions. Knowledge of early Indian-white contacts has long been hampered by the inaccessibility of historical sources. Charles J. Kappler’s well-known collec- tion, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, does not include this early material. Some records have been published piecemeal and incompletely; others not at all. There has been no thorough compilation of the most crucial items: the treaties between the early governments and the Indian tribes and the laws concerning Indians passed by colonial and early national legislatures. Without access to that vital and immense literature—much of it in manu- script, the rest scattered through hundreds of disparate volumes—many of today’s most important historical and legal questions must remain unan- swered. Such questions concern specific matters of tribal rights, land titles, and state boundaries, as well as less tangible but equally important issues of ethnic discrimination and assimilation. Early American Indian Documents brings together the laws relating to the American Indians passed by colonial, state, and national governments before 1789 and all significant diplomatic documents (i.e., treaties, confer- ences, and official correspondence) of the same period. Scholars in several fields—especially law, anthropology, and ethno-history—will find that the collection’s chronological scope and inclusive documentation result in an unparalleled source for the reassessment of early America. Volume I: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737 , edited by Donald H. Kent, covers the first century of negotiations and treatymaking between European newcomers and the natives of the region that became the states of Delaware and Pennsylvania. The period covered in this volume was generally peaceful and friendly, even though the first treaty of Document 10 in Chapter VII: Conestoga, Albany, and Philadelphia, of Volume I: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737 .
Transcript
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UPA American Studies
Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789
General Editor: Alden T. Vaughan, Professor Emeritus of Early American History, Columbia University
The almost two centuries that preceded the implementation of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 were the formative years of Indian-white contact in America. European colonists and American Indians evolved basic patterns of coex-istence—sometimes harmonious, often contentious—that lasted with few fundamental changes until the twentieth century. Those patterns continue to influence governmental policies and judicial decisions.
Knowledge of early Indian-white contacts has long been hampered by the inaccessibility of historical sources. Charles J. Kappler’s well-known collec-tion, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, does not include this early material. Some records have been published piecemeal and incompletely; others not at all. There has been no thorough compilation of the most crucial items: the treaties between the early governments and the Indian tribes and the laws concerning Indians passed by colonial and early national legislatures.
Without access to that vital and immense literature—much of it in manu-script, the rest scattered through hundreds of disparate volumes—many of today’s most important historical and legal questions must remain unan-swered. Such questions concern specific matters of tribal rights, land titles, and state boundaries, as well as less tangible but equally important issues of ethnic discrimination and assimilation.
Early American Indian Documents brings together the laws relating to the American Indians passed by colonial, state, and national governments before 1789 and all significant diplomatic documents (i.e., treaties, confer-ences, and official correspondence) of the same period. Scholars in several fields—especially law, anthropology, and ethno-history—will find that the collection’s chronological scope and inclusive documentation result in an unparalleled source for the reassessment of early America.
Volume I: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, edited by Donald H. Kent, covers the first century of negotiations and treatymaking between European newcomers and the natives of the region that became the states of Delaware and Pennsylvania. The period covered in this volume was generally peaceful and friendly, even though the first treaty of
Document 10 in Chapter VII: Conestoga, Albany, and Philadelphia, of Volume I: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737.
purchase in 1631 was followed in the next year by the massacre of the Dutch settlement at what is now Lewes, Delaware. William Penn became Proprietor of Pennsylvania in 1681, and he pursued just and humane policies toward the Indians. From the 1680s until the 1720s, the Pennsylvania government tried to keep the Indians of the colony from involvement in the persistent warfare between the Five Nations Indians (which became the Six Nations about 1715) and various other southern tribes. Beginning in the 1720s, all treaties for the purchase of land were made with the Six Nations.
Most of the documents in this volume come from such published collections as Colonial Records, Pennsylvania Archives, and Documents Relative to the History of the State of New York. The volume also includes previously unpublished documents from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical Society, the Delaware Hall of Records, and the Pennsylvania State Archives.
Volume II: Pennsylvania Treaties, 1737–1756, edited by Donald H. Kent, deals with treaties and other negotiations between the Indians and Pennsylvania in the period from 1737 to 1756, during which peaceful relations between the natives and the newcomers finally came to an end. No matter how fairly and openly land purchases may have been negotiated between Pennsylvania and the Indians, the natives soon realized that whatever they received in payment was soon spent or used up, leaving them with nothing to show for it. As settlers moved in, the Indians had to move northward in the Susquehanna Valley or westward across the Allegheny Mountains, and the sale of furs and hides to traders became their only means of acquiring the trade goods, firearms, and ammunition that were now necessities of life for them. Furthermore, when Pennsylvania ceased to shelter and protect the Delawares and Shawnees from the demands of the Six Nations, and began to use the Six Nations to manage, police, and control the other Indians, there was an abrupt change in attitude, which gradually becomes apparent in the documents.
Most of the documents in this volume come from documentary publications such as Colonial Records and Pennsylvania Archives; however, the editors have tried to correct deviations from the origi-nal manuscripts. Other documents, hitherto unpublished, come from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania State Archives.
Volume III: Pennsylvania Treaties, 1756–1775, edited by Alison Duncan Hirsch, chronicles the final twenty years of diplomacy between the Pennsylvania government and the descendants of the region’s original inhabitants. These twenty years saw the end to William Penn’s original vision of Europeans and Indians living in
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peaceful coexistence. In October 1755, Pennsylvania’s long peace with the Indians ended with what seemed to Euro-Americans like a sudden crash. In reality, the peace, always tenuous, had been dependent on the willingness of Delawares, Shawnees, Conestogas, Iroquois and others to keep their distance. During Penn’s lifetime, Pennsylvania had been a haven for refugee natives from other colonies, but by 1775 virtually all of Pennsylvania’s Indians had become refugees themselves. These documents are almost unre-mittingly tragic in their tale of death by disease, accident, murder, and warfare. Still, they do contain occasional glimpses of humanity, on both the Indian and white sides, as well as examples of Indian humor that went unnoticed by overly serious English military men and religious leaders.
As much as possible, the documents in this volume are from the original manuscript versions rather than later transcriptions. Most of the documents included here have been published in nine-teenth-century editions such as Colonial Records and Pennsylvania Archives; some have been printed more recently in journals like the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography and Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. Other documents are printed here for the first time. These include manuscripts from the American Philosophical Society, Swarthmore College’s Friends Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Quaker Library at Haverford College, and the State Archives of Pennsylvania. A few documents are from the Public Record Office and the British Library in England.
Indian Deed of September 10, 1683, included in Volume I: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737.
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Volume IV: Virginia Treaties, 1607–1722, edited by W. Stitt Robinson, contains Indian treaties and related documents for Colonial Virginia from the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 to the conclusion of the term of office of Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood in 1722. It devotes greatest attention to the English acquisition of land, colonial trade regulations, legal status of Indians, and the role of religious motives for conversion to Christianity and education as part of Indian policy. The English did not recognize the sovereign right of the natives to the land, the usufruct title. These treaties illustrate the transition in status for the Indians from independent and equal groups to the distinct category of tributary Indians that provided for the jurisdiction by the English over many facets of Indian relations. The treaties and related correspondence also exemplify the many efforts at intercolonial cooperation by Virginia in Indian negotiations, especially with New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina. Many of the docu-ments are reproduced from previously published sources, but others such as the treaties of Governor Spotswood come from the valuable unpublished transcripts and microfilm of the Colonial Office Papers of the British Public Record Office in London
Volume V: Virginia Treaties, 1723–1775, edited by W. Stitt Robinson, reveals the changing emphases in Indian relations for Colonial Virginia from 1722 to the beginning of the American Revolution. The decline in population of the tributary Indians resulted in efforts of the colony to protect them as friends while more extensive negotiations were conducted with larger tribes who were more critical in the contest with the French over western territories. One bold stroke of diplomacy with the Cherokees was the escorting of seven of them to London by Sir Alexander Cuming in 1730. The Board of Trade concluded the treaty of Westminster to “brighten the chain of friendship” and to promote trade. Other efforts involved intercolonial cooperation in negotiations to maintain peace among the larger tribes of Indian allies. The lieutenant governor of New York arranged the treaty of Albany in
1740 with the Iroquois in behalf of both Virginia and Maryland, and the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania accomplished the same goal in the treaty of Lancaster in 1744. The treaty of Logstown in Pennsylvania followed in 1752 with western allies of the Iroquois to clarify the territorial agreements of the Lancaster compact. The British appointed super-intendents of Indian affairs in the 1750s with the responsibility of political rela-tions with the Indians and of maintaining appropriate Indian boundaries. This led John Stuart as southern superintendent to conduct the Augusta Conference in 1763 to explain the Treaty of Paris to southern tribes. He later negotiated boundary lines for the Cherokees in the Treaty of Hard Labor in 1768 and the Treaty of Lochaber in 1770. Several documents in this volume come from the unpublished records of the transcripts and microfilm of the Colonial Office Papers of the British Public Record Office in London.
Volume VI: Maryland Treaties, 1632–1775, edited by W. Stitt Robinson, includes documents for Colonial Maryland from the proprietary charter to the Calverts in 1632 to the end of the colonial period. The pro-prietors claimed absolute power over the colony with the only extended interruption of this authority by the appointment of a royal governor from 1691 to 1715. Indians could claim title to lands only with grants by the proprietors. While Indian affairs were briefly influenced by the conflict with the Dutch and Swedes over the proprietor’s claim to Delaware Bay, the major concerns of the colony were with the status of tribes within its bounds and their relationship to other natives such as the Iroquois in New York. The decline of population among Maryland Indians led to their treaties as tributary Indians by which they had to render annually only a symbolic tribute of from two to six arrows. In response to requests by several small tribes, about sixty manors were created with the belief that this would contribute to the civilizing and Christianizing of natives as articulated in the proprietor’s original charter. Maryland officials supervised and
approved the selection of Indian leaders. They dealt with the complaints of tribal groups against white encroachment upon Indian lands and the destruction of their property and crops. Attention was also directed to the legal status and jurisdic-tion for both offending whites and Indians. In intercolonial relations, Maryland most often was involved in negotiations with the New York governor in behalf of the Iroquois. More limited contacts were made with the Shawnees and the Cherokees, especially in efforts to counter the French threat in the Ohio Valley. The documents in this volume come primarily from the comprehensive source of the Maryland Archives. Other intriguing records come from the Dorchester County Land Records in the Hall of Records in Annapolis and the Calvert Papers in the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore.
Volume VII: New York and New Jersey Treaties, 1609–1682, edited by Barbara Graymont, covers the first seventy-four years of contact between the early European immigrants and the Algonkian and Iroquois inhabitants of the areas that became New York and New Jersey. The documents reveal the rocky relationships of the Dutch with the Indians of the lower Hudson River region and also the difficulty the Indians frequently had in comprehend-ing the European real-estate concept of permanent alienation of land through deed of purchase with accompanying pay-ments. To the native people, this was often conceived as a rental or joint occupation agreement. More accurate translations of certain Dutch documents are included in this volume. The documents demon-strate how the sagacious Indian policy of Governor Edmund Andros after 1674 enhanced not only the power of the New York colony but also the supremacy of the Iroquois Confederacy over rival Indian nations.
Volume VIII: New York and New Jersey Treaties, 1683–1713, edited by Barbara Graymont, chronicles the era of increasing European settlement in New York and New
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Jersey and of the resulting steady decline in population and power of the neigh-boring Algonkian Indians of Long Island, New Jersey, and the Hudson River region. The Iroquois, on the other hand, not only retained their power but also enhanced it as a result of the decline of their Algonkian rivals. The Iroquois alliance with the English was for many years beneficial to both sides but eventually resulted in a steady loss of thousands of acres of Iroquois land to the English. By 1701, exhausted by their long western warfare with the French and their Indian allies, the Iroquois on June 19, 1701, granted their western hunting grounds to the English king; and on August 4, 1701, they made peace with the French and their Indian allies in the west. Both documents are printed in this volume. Also included are several documents from the William Penn Papers covering Governor Penn’s purchase of the Susquehanna lands from the Iroquois.
Volume IX: New York and New Jersey Treaties, 1714–1753, edited by Barbara Graymont, includes documents relating to the adoption of the Tuscaroras as the sixth nation of the Iroquois Confederacy, the rivalry between French Catholic and British Anglican missionaries for the loyalty of the Indians to the respective European governments, and the ongoing complaints of the Indians over the steady loss of their land to the white settlers. As distinct from the Catholic and Anglican missionaries, whose presence had not only a religious but also a political purpose, documents in this volume show that the Moravian clergy were completely evangelical in their mission efforts and sought to protect their converts from exploitation by neighbor-ing whites and to promote an Indianized Christianity. Accordingly, the Moravians were severely persecuted by their white neighbors and local government officials, who concocted tales of supposed nefarious intrigues and Papist plots on the part of the Moravians. The volume includes the 1749 Parliamentary law, approved by the king, recognizing the Moravians as a legitimate Protestant denomination and allowing its
members to settle in the king’s American colonies. Other documents in this volume cover the religious missions of David and John Brainerd, a reproduction of Benjamin Franklin’s printing of the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster, and documents presenting the views and work of Cadwallader Colden and Sir William Johnson.
Volume X: New York and New Jersey Treaties, 1754–1775, edited by Barbara Graymont, covers a time of dramatic change for Indians in the Northeast. The English finally achieved victory over the French in America and occupied Canada and the former French area of influence south of the Great Lakes. William Johnson, the British Indian agent, managed through skillful diplomacy to control the affairs of the Six Nations. He was able to break the 1701 Iroquois neutrality with the French and to persuade the Mohawks and some other Iroquois also to fight against the French. Although the Six Nations trusted Johnson, who had learned their customs and ceremonies, he was actually one of their greatest exploiters. These years were also a time of rapid decline of the Indian population of New Jersey. Some of the noteworthy documents here are the Albany Congress of 1754, including Benjamin Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union, the Treaty of Easton of 1758, the establish-ment of the Indian town of Brotherton in New Jersey, and the treaty with Pontiac and other Indians in 1766. A contemporary eighteenth-century map of the Brotherton Indian Reservation in New Jersey is also included.
Volume XI: Georgia Treaties, 1733–1763, edited by John T. Juricek, reveals that if Georgia had a government during its first decade, it was almost entirely in the hands of the colony’s founder, James Edward Oglethorpe. He immediately recognized that the survival of the colony depended mainly on establishing amicable rela-tions with the Indians who claimed the area (though nearly all lived in what is now Alabama). These were the Creeks, then the most powerful assemblage of native peoples east of the Mississippi
River. Oglethorpe’s Indian diplomacy was effective for five years, but later he made major blunders. His biggest mistake led directly to the “Bosomworth controversy,” a bitter land dispute that in fact threatened the colony’s survival until defused by Governor Henry Ellis. Negotiated agree-ments between the English and the Creeks (including written treaties in 1733, 1739, 1757, and 1763) usually involved the same trade-off: the Creeks sought and received concessions on trade, while the English sought and received concessions on land. The special strength of this volume is that it illuminates how the English acquired—and the Indians lost—rights over land, a much more intricate subject than generally supposed. There were two major wars between the British, French, and Spanish empires during this period, but none of the combatants was able to lure the Creeks into taking sides. Of the 186 documents in this volume, about forty are printed for the first time. Some of them, including several of the most important, have never been noticed by previous historians.
Volume XII: Georgia and Florida Treaties, 1763–1776, edited by John T. Juricek, extends the Georgia story from 1763 to the outbreak of the American Revolution. The story revealed by the documents from this brief period is more complex than the previous volume. At the conclusion of the French and Indian War, the defeated French and Spanish ceded vast territories in the Southeast to the British. The British reorganized these territories into two new colonies adjacent to Georgia: West Florida and East Florida. The volume includes sec-tions on Georgia as well as West Florida and East Florida. The altered political geography of the region reconfigured the channels of diplomacy. Georgia no longer controlled relations with all Creeks, but only the Lower Creeks. Contact with the Upper Creeks would henceforth center on Pensacola in West Florida, while Lower Creek migrants into East Florida (soon known as Seminoles) would be dealt
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with from St. Augustine. The war not only brought the British new lands, but also new peoples with which to deal. Above all, the English in West Florida had to establish regular relations with the Choctaws. More numerous than the Creeks, the Choctaws had been the principal support of French Louisiana. In general, English relations with Indians of the region steadily degener-ated from 1763 to 1776. As the Revolution approached, loyalists sought aid from the Creeks while the patriots—who had much less to offer Indians—merely sought their neutrality. George Galphin and other rebel diplomats succeeded well enough to make a major contribution to the ultimate patriot victory. Nearly three-quarters of the documents in this volume are published for the first time, including two formal trea-ties between the Georgia colony and the Creeks.
Volume XIII: South Carolina and North Carolina Treaties, 1607–1755, edited by W. Stitt Robinson, contains Indian treaties and related documents for the Carolinas from the last half of the seventeenth cen-tury to the middle of the eighteenth. Under the royal charters of 1663 and 1665, the Carolinas were under proprietary control as one political unit until the recognition by 1712 of both North and South Carolina and until the proprietors were superseded by the appointment of royal governors for South Carolina in 1719 and North Carolina
in 1729. The proprietors attempted by 1677 to institute their monopoly of Indian trade with more distant, large tribes and to permit the colonists to trade only with smaller tribes who became known as settlement Indians and eventually agreed to the status of tributary Indians. This monopoly attempt was abandoned in the aftermath of the Westo War in the early 1680s. The outbreak of other Indian Wars resulted in a variety of intercolonial efforts for assistance. North Carolina’s request in the Tuscarora War of 1711–1713 to both Virginia and South Carolina achieved sig-nificant results only from South Carolina. North Carolina, in turn, sent an expedition to assist South Carolina in its serious threat in the Yamasee War that began in 1715. Virginia also sent troops accompanied by Virginia tributary Indians. South Carolina in the eighteenth century was very aggressive in negotiations with the large southeastern tribes of Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws in competition with both the French and Spanish. Separate treaties were concluded with the Cherokees and both the Upper and Lower Creeks, but even greater efforts resulted in attempts to promote a Creek-Cherokee peace. Governor James Glen of South Carolina continued this policy and also obtained the assistance of New York to promote peace between the Catawbas and the Six Nations of Iroquois.
Over 75 of the 204 documents in this vol-ume have been published for the first time. Many of these come from the manuscripts of the South Carolina Council. Others are from the Sainsbury Transcripts of Records in the British Public Record Office Relating to South Carolina. Both of these sources are in the South Carolina Department of Archives and History in Columbia.
Volume XIV: South Carolina and North Carolina Treaties, 1756–1775, edited by W. Stitt Robinson, includes Indian treaties and related documents for the Carolinas from 1756 to the beginning of the American Revolution. The French and Indian War (1754–1763) involved conflict over the Ohio Valley. Even more critical
Engraving of Benjamin West’s famous painting of “The Death of General Wolfe.” General James Wolfe was killed in 1759 during the Battle of Quebec, an important battle of the French and Indian War. Several of the volumes feature documents pertaining to the French and Indian War. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Map of Cherokee Overhill Country included in Volume XIV: North and South Carolina Treaties, 1756–1775.
Library Researchfor Indian affairs was the Cherokee War of 1760–1761. The attacks on Cherokee forts of Prince George and Loudoun, built by the colonies, led to two campaigns by imperial forces and eventually the Cherokee Treaty of 1761, negotiated by the Cherokee leader, Attakullakulla, the Little Carpenter. Administration of Indian affairs beginning in 1756 was also influenced by the imperial appoint-ment of superintendents of Indian affairs, both north and south. Edmund Atkin, author of a plan for management of Indian affairs, received the first appointment for the Southern District. He was most active in conferences with the Cherokees and in treaties with the Choctaws and Alabamas in 1759. John Stuart succeeded Atkin in 1762 and was significantly engaged in arranging conferences and boundary treaties: the Congress of Augusta in 1763, Hard Labor in 1768, Lochaber in 1770, and the Congarees also in 1770. The origi-nal imperial plan to regulate Indian trade was rescinded in 1768 after vigorous complaints from colonial governors who claimed this prerogative. The governors of North and South Carolina, primar-ily on their own initiatives, negotiated their boundary line dispute that left the Catawba Indians in South Carolina as they preferred. The opening military conflicts of the American Revolution left Superintendent Stuart in a questionable status of loyalty, so he left South Carolina, going first to Georgia and then on to St. Augustine.
Over 95 of the 169 documents in this volume are being published for the first time. They include journals from the General Thomas Gage Papers and the Sir William Lyttelton Papers of the Clements Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Still other documents come from the manuscripts in the South Carolina Department of Archives and History in Columbia.
Volume XV: Virginia and Maryland Laws, 1606–1786, edited by Alden T. Vaughan and Deborah A. Rosen, reprints the statutes
pertaining to the native population enacted by the two Chesapeake colonies, plus a few key English documents, between 1606 and 1789. Many of the early laws address matters of war and peace, but others, especially, in the late seventeenth century and beyond, regulated trade with the Indians, allowed or restricted the acquisition of Indian territory, or stipulated which Indians, and under what circumstances, were subjected to servitude for a term of years or slavery for life. Of less significance from today’s perspective, but integral to the daily lives of many colonists and Indians, were statutory inducements to preserve hogs and deer and to kill wolves and other “injurious creatures.”
The 300-plus documents in this volume are drawn from more than a dozen published sources, especially, for Virginia, from W.W. Hening’s Statutes at Large and the many supplements of later years, and, for Maryland, from the Archives and ancillary compilations.
Volume XVI: Carolina and Georgia Laws, 1663–1788, edited by Alden T. Vaughan and Deborah A. Rosen, reprints the statutes concerning Indians in Britain’s three southern-most colonies from their relatively late establishment until 1789. (Carolina, founded in 1663, became North and South Carolina in 1715; Georgia was not chartered until 1732.) Especially in South Carolina, the colonists’ reliance on forced labor is reflected in numerous laws to control “the people commonly called negroes, Indians, mulattoes and mustizoes” who “have been deemed absolute slaves.” Still, as in all
Document 77 in Chapter II: Massachusetts in Volume XVII: New England and Middle Atlantic Laws.
Documents 78 and 79 in Chapter II:
Massachusetts in Volume XVII: New
England and Middle Atlantic Laws.
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of the British colonies, a great many laws try to regulate commerce between colonist and Indians in goods, land, or liquor.
The nearly 200 transcriptions in this volume come principally from the Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, the Statutes at Large of South Carolina, and the Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, with several selections from additional sources. A notable document, here printed the first time, is the Carolina Slave Code of 1696.
Vol. XVII: New England and Middle Atlantic Laws, edited by Alden T. Vaughan and Deborah A. Rosen, compiles the stat-utes pertaining to Indians in ten colonial jurisdictions from New Hampshire to Delaware, plus an appendix of the federal govern-
The documents in this volume are taken from the principal collec-tions for each colony/state in the region, such as the Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, supplemented by many individual statutes from the Evans microfiche series, and the Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania. The laws pertaining to Indians enacted by the national government before 1789 are drawn from the Journals of the Continental Congress.
Volume XVIII: Revolution and Confederation, 1776–1789, edited by Colin G. Calloway, brings together the key documents of the British-Indian and American-Indian diplomatic encounters during the contests of the Revolutionary era, the treaties and other foundational documents in the formative years of U.S. Indian policy. The volume also includes the speeches and statements of Indian leaders as they responded to and in some cases shaped these dramatic events.
Due to the large number of American Indian treaties from the Confederation period, this volume gives priority to the treaties themselves, the proceedings that led up to them, and materials that best illustrate the nature of the negotiations. The documents in this volume are drawn from more than 25 sources, including American Archives, American State Papers Class II: Indian Affairs, Colonial Office Records from the Public Record Office, Journals of the Continental Congress, the George Morgan Letterbook from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and the Public Papers of George Clinton.
Volume XIX: Southern New England, 1634–1775, edited by Daniel R. Mandell, deals with European and Native interac-tions south of the Merrimac River, east of the Connecticut River, and north of Long Island Sound and Buzzard’s Bay. This region includes the modern states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Since this series focuses on diplomatic relations, this volume begins with active European exploration and settlement and concludes with the end of Indian sovereignty. The purpose of this volume is to include all extant treaties, conferences, and other diplomatic matters between natives and newcomers taking place in or directly involving this particular region. The editor of this volume interprets this notion liberally, since diplomacy between Indians and colonists also took place through trade, informal meetings, chance encounters, and letters. In addition to providing extensive documentation of the Pequot War of 1636, John Eliot’s Indian converts, and King Philip’s War, this volume reveals the details of a long “cold war” that developed between Narragansetts, English colonies, and Mohegans, and the complex intertribal and colonial politics that emerged in large part because of that con-flict. This volume pulls together documents published in various collections, checked against the original manuscripts for accuracy, as well as some unpublished materials from the Massachusetts and Connecticut Archives.
“George Rogers Clark, addressing the Indians at Cahokia” included in Volume XVIII: Revolution and Confederation. National Park Service.
ment’s laws and resolutions under the Articles of Confederation from 1775 to 1789. This immense body of legislation (835 docu-ments, with citations to many re-enactments) addresses a wide range of Anglo-Indian encounters—including military, missionary, commercial, and judicial—in colonies founded by diverse English, Dutch, and Swedish religious and commercial companies, whose enactments affected dozens of native nations, from the Micmacs in the far north to the Lenapes and Nanticokes in the south.
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Volume XX: Northern New England, 1607–1775, edited by Daniel R. Mandell, contains a wide range of documents relating to diplomatic relations between natives and colonists within two connected regions: primarily Wabanaki territory (today the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont), but also the Housatonic Valley between the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers, which served as a crossroads between the far northeast, Iroquoia, and the areas as far west as the Ohio Valley. It emphasizes English and Wabanaki relations between 1670 and 1770, as the colonists maneuvered to solidify and expand settlements along the Maine coast and the Natives fought or negotiated to stop or mitigate that growth. After 1690, Wabanaki resistance became part of the larger imperial competition between England (whose administrative center in the region was Boston) and France (whose colonial capital of Quebec lay only a week from the mushrooming English coastal settlements). In the Housatonic River Valley, mixed communities of Mahicans and refugees (including Wabanakis) sought new accommodations with the expanding Massachusetts colony; some settled in the new mission town of Stockbridge but maintained connections with relatives far to the north and west of the area. New York and the Iroquois were also deeply involved in the diplomacy in both areas.
Most of the documents in this volume were published in the Documentary History of the State of Maine, now no longer avail-able, and some previously unpublished documents are from the Massachusetts Archives and the British Public Records Office. These documents range from extremely detailed conference minutes to a bill for the expenses of a Mohawk delegation to Boston, show-ing how diplomacy took place through trade, informal meetings, chance encounters, letters, and at least one party in a Boston tavern.
Carefully edited and annotated by acknowledged authorities on early European-Indian relations, Early American Indian Documents is a source of immense value for legal scholars, social historians, ethnohistorians, and anyone interested in America’s formative years.
Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789
