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Professor examines untold story of Washington, Native Americans |
| By
Deanna Lytle |
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Feb 21, 2005 |
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Ask any elementary school student about George Washington and the stories you hear will range from a fictitious yarn about the president chopping down a cherry tree as a youngster to the inspiring tale of him crossing the Delaware River to surprise British troops during the Revolutionary War. But ask any child, or adult for that matter, about Washington’s war against Native Americans and you will likely end up with blank stares.
Dr. Barbara Mann hopes to change that by bringing to light the forgotten Western front of the Revolutionary War with her new book, George Washington’s War on Native America (Praeger Publishers, 2005).
Mann has spent two years examining writings of military personnel, congressional committees, newspaper reporters, British forces and Native Americans in order to piece together the information for the book. She also traveled to New York to speak with Keepers — oral traditionalists — of the Six Nations League of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois).
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| The Mohawk Indian Chief Thayendanegea, or Joseph Brant of the Nations of the Iroquois League, shown here in a 1786 painting by Gilbert Stuart, served as a spokesman for his people and a British military officer during the Revolutionary War. He helped unify upper New York Indian tribes and led them in raids against patriot communities in support of Great Britain's efforts to quell the rebellion. |
What emerged from her research was a startling picture of genocide set against a backdrop of land disputes. Before the Americans declared their independence, “King George and the British forces were actually keeping settlers off the land,” Mann, lecturer in English, said. She offered the example of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768, which limited the settlers to certain lands. The colonists, however, were not too happy about this, pressing their leaders to open up the territories. Added to this was the fact that members of the Continental Army were being paid with land — all of the soldiers and officers would need thousands of acres of property after the war to pay off the land warrants. Washington, therefore, made the decision to fight Native Americans for their land.
The war was fought mainly against natives in New York, Pennsylvania and present-day Ohio. “It was total war — civilians were killed and crops, stores and houses were burned,” Mann said. “Over 60 Iroquois cities were destroyed. To get a sense of this loss, I tell people to get a map of your state and cross out the capital city. Then cross out the next 59 largest cities. When you get done, there is not much left. This is what happened to the Iroquois.” This first round of attacks occurred before the winter of 1779 to 1780, one of the worst on record. “There were reports of three- to four-foot drifts of snow. New York Harbor waters froze such that people could walk from one side to the other,” Mann said of the brutal winter. “Many of the 10,000 native refugees were found frozen in the woods, along with the bodies of thousands of animals.”
Native Americans were drastically outnumbered in later battles. “On a good day in 1779, it was 800 natives versus 5,000 American soldiers,” Mann described. And these soldiers thought nothing of torturing their victims before death, skinning them alive and using the epidermis to make chaps, shoes and reins. In the chapter “Settler Assaults on Ohio, 1782,” Mann details the slaughter of non-combatant Lenapes and Mahicans at Gnadenhutten, Ohio. Men were separated from women and children, and members of the Pennsylvania Militia murdered all 96 villagers. One of two surviving eyewitnesses, a teenage boy named Thomas, woke up to find his skull fractured and his scalp gone. He feigned death for several hours, hiding behind a pile of bodies, until he could escape to Upper Sandusky to tell the league nations what had occurred.
Although the Native Americans eventually won the Revolutionary War in the West, the following years saw a steady encroachment on their lands by settlers. “With many of the Revolutionary War veterans inhabiting Ohio lands, Washington had a crop of soldiers to keep up the fight,” Mann said. “Ohio was won within 20 years.”
While Gnadenhutten and other bloody events bring up painful feelings on both sides of the conflict, Mann believes her book comes at a time when people can look at the past and say, “What were they thinking?” “I always tell people that you didn’t do this — all you can do is to look back and realize not to do this ever again,” she said. “It’s healthy to recognize what happened … to have a reckoning not to cause guilt pangs, but to clear the record. You can’t have a good future unless you understand the past.”
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