from. the colony by making it unlawful to employ one of this tribe who was not a slave, or, in fact, any free Indian to hunt game, except the Pamunkey, Chickahominy, or Eastern Shore Indians. During the same session it was decreed that it was not lawful for any Indian to barter, sell, or devise land laid out for them by the peace of May 29, 1677, and all such bargains were declared void; nor could any one lease or occupy Indian land, under penalties, or settle within 3 miles of an Indian village; but if the Indian town were on one side of a river and the English settlement on the other, the river was to be a sufficient boundary between the two. Any injury done to a tributary Indian was to be punished as though the offense had been committed upon an Englishman. On the other hand, tributary Indians were permitted to go unarmed upon land belonging to the English to gather such roots and oysters as were not needed by the settler. Tributary Indians were to give notice of the approach of strange Indians, and should they need aid the militia were ordered to render it. In return, the tributary Indians were to march with the English against strange Indians. Free trade was permitted with all Indians, but no liquor was to be sold on Indian land. "If any person discovers a town or nation of Indians west of the Appalachian Mountains it shall be lawful for the governor and council to grant sole liberty to trade with said Indians for fourteen years, and such discoverers may have a charter of corporation with liberty and privilege."2

In less than ten years Virginia traders were said to have their "chiefest traffique some four or five hundred miles to the south-west, among Indians whose names are scarce known to any but the traders." 3

The exploration of the Neuse River by De Graffenried and Lawson, in September, 1711, in order to ascertain its navigability and the fitness of the region for the occupation of the German colony, gave fresh umbrage to the already irritated Tuscaroras. A party of Indians captured the two men, and soon spread havoc among the settlers nearer the coast.5 North Carolina had been involved in party troubles, and the various leaders used what means were possible to assert the claims of their respective parties. One is said to have sought help from the Indians, the young men agreeing to render the desired aid, but the elder Indians refusing to take any part in the affair. On learning of the capture of De Graffenried and the warfare upon the settlers, Governor Spotswood sent out detachments of militia to prevent the tributary Indians of Virginia from being drawn into the fray, and he also dispatched messengers to the Tuscaroras to meet him on the border of the Dominion, that they might make a treaty. With the assembled soldiery of three counties, amounting to upwards of six hundred men, the governor met the deputies of those towns among the Tuscaroras which refused to

'Hening: Statutes of Virginia, p. 343. 2 Ibid., pp. 464–469. 3 Spotswood Letters, Vol. I, p. 167. 4 Bancroft: Hist. of the U. S., Vol. III, p. 319. Letters, Vol. I, p. 116. 6 Ibid., p. 96. 7 Ibid., p. 117.

5 Spotswood

take part in the war, and proposed that they should deliver "two Children of the great men of each town, to remain as Hostages, and to be educated at our College." But as these deputies had no authority to conclude these arrangements they agreed to inform their nation and return answer by November 20.1 Meanwhile the Assembly passed the following act for the protection of the frontier by appointing rangers and defining their duties: If the "rangers" shall see any Indian whatsoever and endeavor to seize him, they shall, if they see cause, convey him before a justice of the peace, who may commit him to the sheriff, and he to the lieutenant-governor or commandant of the Dominion, the justice to certify the cause. If the Indians so arrested belong to any nation at war with the English, they shall be transported and sold for the benefit of the rangers. If any Indian seen shall attempt to run away, he may be killed, and the person killing him incur no penalty. Any person capturing an Indian who has attacked a white person shall receive £20 reward, or in case the Indian has been killed owing to resistance, he shall receive a like amount. Rangers to be exempt from parish levies during service, and this act to be in force one year. The Assembly of the next year continued the act for another year. The tributary Indians, as well as the Tuscaroras, agreed to give their chil dren as hostages, but owing to sickness and bad weather the Tusca rora deputies were detained a few days beyond the date agreed upon, and the Assembly, upon a representation from Carolina, requested the governor to declare war upon the Tuscaroras. Governor Spotswood writes to the board of trade:

So violent an humour prevail amongst them [the Assembly] for extirpating all the Indians without distinction of Friends or Enemys, that even a project I laid before them for assisting the College to support the charge of those Hostages has been thrown aside without allowing it a debate in their House, tho' it was proposed on such a foot as would not have cost the country one farthing.3

The governor seems to have met with something more than indifference from the Assembly, in his plans for securing the friendship and co-operation of these Indians, who not only gave up their children as sureties of good faith but secured the liberation of De Graffenried, and offered to assist in fighting those Indians who had risen against the English. The Assembly voted £20,000 to carry on a war against all the Tuscaroras, even after the treaty "entered into at the instance of their own house" was laid before them; the governor, however, refused to declare the war. Some gentlemen voluntarily offered to advance money on the credit of the revenue to make good the treaty with the Tuscaroras.5

In 1712 there were "nine nations" of Indians tributary to Virginia. " The Pamunkeys, Chickahominies, Nansemonds, Nottoways, Maherins, Sapons, Stukanocks, Occoneechees, and Totteros, some seven hundred in all. These lived quietly in entire subjection to the government, traf1 Spotswood Letters, Vo. I., p. 121. 2 Hening: Statutes of Virginia, Vol. IV., p. 10. *Spotswood Letters, Vol. I, p.130. Ibid., pp. 130, 131, 134, 135, 144. 5 Ibid., pp. 141, 145.

4

ficking pelts for clothing, arms, and ammunition. Trade was also held with the neighboring Tuscaroras, who were said to have two thousand fighting men. The same authority gives the number fit to bear arms and free men in the Dominion at twelve thousand and fifty one.2

Difficulties with the Indians increased. Allies from the southern tribes of Cherokees, Creeks, Catawbas, and Yamassies joined the forces of South Carolina, and came to the aid of the North Carolinians who were battling with the Tuscaroras, now assisted by the Senecas of the Five Nations of New York. The dissensions in the colony prevented any unity of action, and a hasty peace was concluded, and as soon broken by the returning South Carolina troops. These fell upon Indian towns protected by the treaty, and many persons were carried off as captives. This treachery brought on fresh attacks from the outraged Indians, who fell indiscriminately upon the settlers and tributary Indians of Virginia, the peaceful Nottoways losing five of their number in a single day. Finally a battle took place on the Neuse that ended disastrously to the Tuscaroras. The many captives taken were sold as slaves, and the power of the Indians of North Carolina was broken; the hostile por tion of the Tuscaroras left the country about 1714, and joined the Iroquois of New York, forming the Sixth Nation of that league.3

The desire of the French and the various colonies to control the Indian trade had much to do with fomenting these and other wars. The possession of the great Mississippi Valley was almost literally being fought for by individual and enterprising traders, prior to the time that this wide region of country came to play a public part in the politics of foreign nations. Virginia traders had penetrated so far westward that "they must travel fifteen hundred miles to come at their most considerable" nations. The long journeys made by the traders, and the risk they frequently ran of losing their goods from war parties en route to attack some distant tribe, together with unfair dealings in trade and advantages taken by making Indians intoxicated, frequently led to grave results, involving not only the settlers but innocent and friendly Indians in a disastrious warfare. The early history of each one of the colonies gives many such instances.5 Governor Spotswood writes to the lord commissioners of trade in London, May 9, 1716:

It has been the general observation in this and the Neighboring provinces, that the Indians have rarely ever broke with the English, except where they have received some notorious Injury from the persons trading with them. Advantage has often been taken by making them drunk, to impose upon them in the price of their Commoditys, which, they not being acquainted with the method of seeking reparation by law, have frequently revenged by the murder of the offender, believing that since by their Customs the punishment of murder may be Commuted by the payment of a certain number of skins or other Commoditys, the defrauding them of any part of their goods might with equal reason be punished with Death."

1 Spotswood Letters, Vol. I, p. 167. 2 Ibid., p. 166. 3 Bancroft: Hist. of the U. S., Vol. III, pp. 320, 321; Spotswood Letters, Vol. I, pp. 169, 170, 171, Vol. II, pp. 19, 24, 25. Spotswood Letters, Vol. I, p. 172. 5 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 25, 121, 231.

Ibid., p. 145.

4

The aggressive Iroquois continued their excursions in spite of the various treaties made with the purpose of preventing their moving southward against their ancient enemies. The treaty of 1722, made at Albany, in connection with the governors of the other colonies to the northward, sought to impose the penalty of death or slavery upon any one of the Five Nation Indians passing to the southward of the Potomac River, or east of the mountains, without a passport from the governor of New York; the tributary Indians of Virginia to remain to the eastward of these limits under pain of like penalty.1 By these means the colonists sought peace and an opportunity to enlarge their settlements.

An act of the Assembly, in August, 1734, permitted free Indians to testify in criminal cases involving Indians. This same year the Nottoway Indians, being "reduced by wars, sickness, and other casualties to a small number, and many of them being too old to labor or hunt," agreed to sell the land set apart for them on the north side of the river in order to "pay their debts" and support their aged. The record also states that "the tract prevents increase of inhabitants in that parish, and is therefore grievous and burdensome." 3 About this time, as

the Indians all spoke "the English language very well," the office of interpreter was abolished.*

Ten years later the Nottoways sold a portion of their reservation south of the river, not to include any of the swamp, at £12 10s. per hundred acres; and the Nansemond Indians also disposed of their land, these Indians being again in debt, being enticed "thereto by drink; whereupon the Assembly decreed that "no one shall sell liquor on trust to an Indian." 5

"

In 1748 negroes, mulattoes, and Indians were permitted to hold slaves of their own color. This act, however, was repealed by the King in 1752.6

The settlements of the valleys west of the Alleghany Mountains, begun about 1751, were involved in many difficulties with the Indians, particularly through the French and Indian war. In 1761 all British subjects living on the western waters were ordered to vacate the lands, which were claimed by the Indians. This command was issued in the hope of securing the good-will of the natives; but the order was never carried out, and that region became the scene of the exploits of Cornstalk, the Shawnee warrior. These Indians were a valiant tribe, and were those who defeated General Braddock in 1755, and were again victorious at Fort Pitt in 1758. After the peace of 1761 the Shawnees again were in the field, and cut off the settlers of the Greenbrier Valley in 1763, and in 1764 had pushed as far east as Staunton. That year a peace was made on the Muskingum in Ohio, which lasted until 1774. The colonial disturbances with the mother country were used by inHening: Statutes of Virginia, Vol. IV, p. 103. 2 Ibid., p. 405. 3 Ibid., p. 461.

Ibid., Vol.V, p. 270–273. Ibid., p. 547.

terested persons to foment trouble with the Indians, in order to intimidate and embarrass those of the independent party, while the spread of settlers on the Ohio and its tributaries made the Indians uneasy and irritable. It is stated that British agents urged the Indians to begin. war against the colonists by the killing of traders. This aroused the Virginians, and on October, 10, 1774, General Lewis fought the Indians under Cornstalk on the Ohio near the Kanawha with little success on either side. This battle has been called by some the opening of the Revolutionary War. A peace was soon after concluded by Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia.

In 1777 Cornstalk came to the garrison at Point Pleasant to tell the colonial troops that the British were securing the co-operation of all the Indians on the lakes and northerly, but that he and his tribe, although not wishing to take part, might have to move with the stream. He was detained by the commander, together with the two other Indians who accompanied him. Cornstalk's son came to learn how his father fared and to bring him news of the tribe. Two young men from the garrison crossed the river to hunt deer and were attacked by some hostile Indians; one of the men was killed. As his body was brought back the soldiers, under the lead of one Captain Hall, a relative of the dead man, rushed to the fort to kill Cornstalk, who was just then drawing a map of the country and waters between the Shawnee towns and the Mississippi. As they approached Cornstalk rose and met them. They sent seven or eight bullets through him, then shot his son as he sat on a stool, and murdered the other two Indians. Cornstalk had come as a friend to render service at a critical time, and was stricken down regard. less of the laws of peace or war because he was an Indian.1

The condition of the Indians in the other Southern colonies remained about the same, as far as legal enactments were concerned. The founding of the Colony of Georgia was attended by most friendly relations between the natives and Oglethorpe. He won the confidence and friendship of the Cherokees and Creeks, and the knowledge of this trusty man extended far beyond the limits of the province of which he was the father. During the years when the Spanish and French urged their claims to the land and trade of the Indians the Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws remained faithful to Oglethorpe and the English until his departure for England in 1743.

Except the attempts made by the Moravians, during their short stay in Georgia, to Christianize the Indians, no other efforts in this behalf seem to have been undertaken in that colony during this period.

Education.-In 1713 the plan of removing friendly Indians upon land set apart for them upon the frontier, where they might act as a guard, was put in operation, it having been previously agreed to by treaty." The Indians and Indian trade were to be concentrated at three points. A fort was Stuart: Memoir of Indian Wars; Coll. Virginia Hist. and Phil. Soc., Vol. I. * Spotswood Letters, Vol. II., pp. 43, 70, 197.