Quatawepea (Captain Lewis)

and the Centuries-Long Quest for an Indian State

Moving Apart/The Origins of Indian Removal.

Between 1720 and 1754, a Shawnee man named Peter Chartier robbed British traders, rejected French demands for consolidating his people at Detroit, and encouraged pan-Indian expressions of unity.

A Cayuga man described Lower Shawnee Town as “a Republic composed of all sorts of nations”

A white captive described Neolin’s principals in this way: “The first, (or principal doctrine,) they taught them, was to purify themselves from sin, which they taught they could do by the use of emetics, and abstinence from carnal knowledge of the different sexes; to quit the use of firearms, and to live entirely in the original state that they were in before the white people found out their country”

At the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, Blue Jacket stated that: “You see me now present myself as a war chief, to lay down that commission, and place myself in the rear of my village chiefs, who, for the future, will command me. . . . We must think of war no more.”

Little Turtle, Blue Jacket’s Miami ally

The American Revolution and Delaware-led state

Article 6, Treaty of 1778 with the Delawares:”And it is further agreed on between the contracting parties should it for the future be found conducive for the mutual interest of both parties to invite any other tribes who have been friends to the interest of the United States, to join the present confederation, and to form a state whereof the Delaware nation shall be the head, and have a representation in Congress”

As early as 1715, a Delaware leader named Sassoonan told William Penn that the English and the Delaware “should by joyn’d as one, that the Indians should be half English & the Indians should make themselves as half Indians”

Joseph Brant Thayendegea, recalled that “a moon of wampum was placed in this country with four roads leading to the center.” These roads allowed Indians “from different quarters to come and settle or hunt here.” For Brant, the Midwest became known as “the dish with one spoon.”

An Iroquois-Led Confederacy

“My children, you complain that the animals of the forest are few and scattered. How shall it be otherwise? You destroy them yourselves for their skins only. And leave their bodies to rot or give the best pieces to the whites. I am displeased when I see this, and take them back to the earth that they may not come to you again. You must kill no more animals than are necessary to feed and clothe you”

Tecumseh believed “that all the remaining Indian land belonged to no particular tribe, only to all the Indians in general”

Many Native peoples from the Old Northwest moved voluntarily during and after the American Revolution. A majority of Shawnees lived in Missouri before the War of 1812. A Shawnee leader frankly admitted that “we knew that our people would not live well or happy at war with the whites”

Quatawepea believed that an Indian state would “render our living less precarious as well as less burdensome to our friends the white people.”

Led by an expanding population of Western Cherokees, members of an alliance proposed a “union of tribes” along the Ozark frontier. Quatawepea wanted to create “one great family.”

Isaac McCoy and his dream of Aboriginia and the Indian Removal Act of 1830

Forgotten Leaders: Black Hoof, Colonel Lewis, or Quatawepea, and

Paithuckoosaw

Big Jim and Charles Bluejacket