OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Ohio's Huron and Wyandot Indians [3]
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Historical Collections of Ohio
Diaries of S. J. Kelly
Plains Dealer
Know Your Ohio
by Darlene E. Kelley
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Ohio's Huron and Wyandot Indians -- part 3.

After Washington's failure, the British began to asemble a large army
under General Edward Braddock to capture Fort Duquesne  (Pittsburgh). As
the war clouds gathered, the members of the alliance ( including the
Wyandot) supported the French, but the Ohio tribes ( Mingo, Delaware,
and Shawnee ) should have been British allies, or at the very least,
neutral. This was the case until they learned the Iroquois, at the
Albany Conference of 1754, had ceded Ohio to the British. At this point
they gave up on the British and Iroquois, and declared that Ohio
belonged to the people that lived there. However, they still did not
immediately turn to the French. In July,1775 Braddock's army moved on
Fort Duquesne, only to be defeated in the woods by a mixed force of
French and native allies from Canada and the Great Lakes. The leader of
the Natives was Alhanase, a Huron war chief from Lorette. Afterwards,
Delaware and Shawnee warriors entered the war and, in direct defiance of
the Iqoquois, raided British fronter settlements in Pennsyvania and
Virginia. The Wyanot and other French allies went east to fight in the
French campaigns in northern New York.

After the Great Lakes warriors returned from the seige of Fort William
Henry in 1757, smallpox swept through the Great Lakes during the winter
of 1757-58 which fairly well ended further participation of the alliance
tribes in the war. With the capture of Quebec and Fort Niagara in 1759,
the war in North America was over. After Montreal surrendered the
Brittish occupied Detroit in 1760, and only the Illinois country
remained under French control until 1765. The members of the French
allience had to come to terms with the British and in 1761 agreed to
meet at Detroit with Sir William Johnson, the British Indian
Commissioner. It was a large conference attended by Iroquois, Wyandot,
Delaware, Shawnee, Mohican, kickapoo, Miami, Ojibwe, Mingo, Ottawa, and
Potawatomi. In keeping with the traditions of the old French alliance,
the Wyandot were made the keepers of the council fire.

Johnson wisely did not wish to change past relationships but only to
adapt them to British authority. Unfortunately, Lord Jeffery Amherst,
his superior and the British commander in North Amerca, had different
ideas. Viewing the former French allies as a conquered people, Amherst
raised prices on trade goods and limited the supply of gunpower. This
was a disaster. After 150 years of trade, Native Americans had become
dependant on European goods. Tensions rose, and aggravated by crop
failures and epidemic during 1762, erupted into the Pontiac Rebellion in
1763. The Wyandot reluctantly joined Pontiac and attacked the British
fort at Sandusky, but as the seige of Detroit dragged on, the Detroit
Wyandot were among the first to ask the British for peace. Pontiac
signed a preliminary truce with the British Commander at Detroit in
October and withdrew to Indiana. In August.1764 the Ohio Wyandot made
peace with the British and signed the Treaty of Presque Isle. The
Detroit Wyandot followed suit in September.

During the French and India war, Pennsylvania had unilaterally renounced
the Iroquois cession of Ohio at the Albany Conference in 1754 and this
was a major factor in the lack of resistance the British encountered
when they occupied the Ohio Valley in 1760. In the wake of the Pontiac
rebellion, the British halted settlement west of the Appalachians in
1763. However, faced with growing discontent in the American colonies,
they began negotiations with the Iroquois in 1768 to open Ohio to
settlement. After the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, American frontiersmen
(Long Knives) swarmed into western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and eastern
Ohio. The alliance had collapsed with the failure of the Pontiac
Rebellion, but having learned in 1754 not to depend on the Iroquois, the
Shawnee in 1769 made overtures of alliance to Illinois. Wea, Piankashaw,
Miami, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Wyandot, Ottawa, Delaware, Mascouten,
Ojibwe, Cherokee, and Chickasaw. Meetings were held at Sciota in 1770
and 1771, but William Johnson's threats of war with the Iroquois kept
the tribes divded, and the Shawnee, Delaware and Mingo were forced to
stand alone against the "Long Knives" during Lord Dunmore's ( Cresap's )
War ( 1774 ).

With the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775, the British ended
their neutrality in the struggle between the " Long Knives" and Ohio
tribes and urged the Indians to attack American settlements in Kentucky
and Pennsylvania. The Shawnee were the most active in this, but they
received increasing support from the Detroit and Ohio tribes. In
September,1777 a force of 400 Wyandot, Mingo, and Shawnee attacked Fort
Henry ( Wheeling, West Virginia) and burned the nearby settlement. The
following year, Half King's Wyandot made a feint at Fort Randolf ( Point
Pleasant, West Virginia ) and then attacked settlements on the Kanawha
River. They also attacked a blockhouse near Fort Union and later joined
the British expedition of Captain Henry Bird which ravaged the Kentucky
settlements during 1780. In March,1782, Pennsylvania militia massacred
90 Christian Delaware at the Movarian mission at Gnadenhuetten ( Ohio ).
Victims included men, women, and over 30 children, and this senseless
act added a bitter note of revenge to the struggle. That June an
American force under Colonel William Crawford was sent to attack the
Sandusky villages. Defeated by a combined force of Delaware and Wyandot,
Crawford was captured by the Wyandot. Half King turned him over to the
Delaware who burned him at the stake in revenge for the Movarian
Delaware killed at Gnadenhuetten.

With the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, the Wyandot had only 100
warriors. The British asked their allies to stop their attacks, but
there was little chance of this. The bitter fighting between the Ohio
tribes and Long Knives had taken on a life of its own beyond the control
of either the British or United States. The warriors fighting for Ohio
were determined to keep the Americans out , and the Long Knives did not
consider the peace with Britain included Indians, so the fighting
continued. The new American Government needed to sell the lands in Ohio
to pay its debts from the war, and the British knowing this, saw an
opportunity to regain their colonies through economic collapse and
refused to withdraw from its forts in the Ohio valley until the
Americans paid the obligations to British Loyalists required by the
peace treaty.

The Long Knives' solution to this impasse was simple. George Rogers
Clark, whose victories had given the Americans the Ohio Valley, asked
for authorization to raise an army and conquer all the Indians. Congress
thanked him for past services but politely refused. Faced with an
invasion of Ohio which might threaten Canada, the British encouraged the
formation of an new alliance against the Americans. It was formed at a
meeting held at the Sandusky
villages of the Wyandot in 1783. Although the British did not attend
themselves, they brought the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant from Canada to
speak and promise their support. Those joining included; Mingo, Wyandot,
Miami, Delaware, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Sauk Ottawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and
Chickamauga ( Cherokee ). The first council fire was moved to the
Wyandot village of Brownstown ( just south of Detroit ).

Wishing to avoid an expensive war, the Americans in 1784 negotiated a
second Treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois confirming their earlier
cession of Ohio. The next step was to reach an agreement with Ohio
tribes, but this would be difficult since the Americans refused to
recognize the alliance which had been formed at Sandusky the previous
year. The Treaty of Fort MacIntosh ( 1775 ) was signed with the Wyandot,
Ottawa,Ojibwe, and Delaware where they agreed to American sovereignty
over Ohio in exchange for a boundary with white settlement. Half King
signed for the Wyandot but later repudiated the agreement. In 1786 a
simular treaty was signed with the Shawnee at Fort Finney ( Greater
Miami Treaty ), but both of these agreements were doomed. The chiefs who
signed did not represent the consensus of the allience and even before
Congress had been able to sell the Ohio Company and a New Jersey
syndicate, American frontiersman were flooding into Ohio and squatting
on land beyond the agreed boundaries. There were 12,000 white settlers
north of the Ohio in 1785, and General Josiah Harmer, the American
military commander, could neither keep them from encroaching on Native
lands nor remove them once they were there.
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to be continued in part 4 -- 
The Chippewa Treaty with the Wyandot -- 1785.