Major Abraham Kirkpatrick was not one to mince words. “There is a few of them Damned Cherokees,” he reported in July 1784, “near 40 men, settled on Siota about the old Chillicoffee Towns . . . These is the Villains that killed the family at the blue licks,” he continued, “as is still doing mischeif on some parts of the settlements.”
Kirkpatrick was one of Lt. Col. Richard Clough Anderson’s deputy surveyors and had just returned home to Pittsburgh after more than three months in the wilderness. While surveys for Virginia veterans continued in Kentucky’s Green River District, Kirkpatrick had been tasked with assessing things in the still off-limits Ohio Military District on his way home. “Tis absolutely necessary that they should quit that country before we attempt to Survey,” the one-eyed soldier insisted. “Them and us can’t both reside there at the same time. We came near them (perhaps within 10 miles) but avoided going to the old Towns for fear of them and was verry carefull that they would not even hear of us.”[1]
Near Philadelphia, Gen. Peter Muhlenberg, also just back from Kentucky, worried about bigger threats than the forty Cherokee camped near old Chillicothe (Westfall, Ohio). He advised Congress: “This is the critical time . . . to establish peace or to prevent them from forming a combination against us.”
The Six Nations Confederacy had shown a century before what Native unity could achieve, and Ottawa war chief Pontiac helped form a powerful multi-tribe offensive in the 1760s. But in 1784, Muhlenberg feared war might simply be a consequence of Congressional inaction. An Indian confederacy was on hold, he said, only because the Shawnee refused to join “until they should be fully apprised of our intentions” and due to “a quarrel which arose between the Kickapoos and Chickasaws.” The lack of diplomacy made the Shawnee suspicious. Those he met with at Fort Nelson “gave us repeated hints, that if we meant to take any of their lands on the West side of the Ohio, it would not be given up without a contest.” The Shawnee were key. “If a general Treaty cannot be held at this time,” Muhlenberg advised, “a partial treaty with them would keep the other Nations quiet and give us so much time at least as will be necessary to provide against the worst. If this is not done before the Fall,” he warned, “I am convinced from the present situation of affairs that a War is unavoidable.”[2]
Join the conversation as a VIP Member