CHAPTER 6Haudenosaunee Communities and Imperial Warfare, 1744–1763

In July 1747, Gingegoe, a Mohawk war leader, earned a cash payment of 125 pounds from William Johnson, Colonel of the warriors of the Six Nations, when he turned over four adult prisoners, three prisoners under the age of 16, and the scalps of an additional three underaged victims. After Gingegoe received the payment, he redistributed some of the bounty to the men who joined him on the expedition. Although Gingegoe lacked hereditary connections to village leadership positions, he exploited his military prowess for personal and family benefits and allocated valuable economic resources to loyal followers. Gingegoe and other war leaders adapted to new market opportunities to provide for their families and communities through cash payment for their labor and direct connections to William Johnson. Although the ascent of war leaders posed a challenge to the clout of hereditary village leaders who monopolized access to desired manufactured goods and patronage, the exchanges between war leaders and the men they led adhered to the Haudenosaunee ethic of gift-giving and reciprocity, whereby long-standing social and cultural values established and solidified hierarchical relationships within communities and with outsiders.¹

Gingegoe earned and redistributed his military bounty during the imperial conflict of the War of the Austrian Succession, popularly known in the British North American colonies as King George's War. Between 1712 and 1744, Haudenosaunee communities had experienced a tenuous peace with their competing imperial neighbors as New France and New York aggressively worked to extend their economic and military influence over Native allies and to occupy Indigenous homelands. That relative peace began to fracture in 1744 when France joined Spain in their war against the British. Although the major military operations of the war unfolded on the European continent, colonial officials in North America prepared for invasions along porous borderlands. For Mohawk Valley residents, the war revived fears of French militaries and their Indigenous allies attacking exposed settlements.²

During the early years of the war, Mohawk fighters observed a general neutrality and declined to provide New York with meaningful military assistance. After New York Governor George Clinton appointed William Johnson colonel of the warriors of the Six Nations in August 1746, however, Canajoharie and Tiononderoge Mohawk men agreed to assist their colonial neighbors. Haudenosaunee men had long served as scouts, guides, and couriers because of their geographic knowledge, and they now exchanged those skills for monetary and tangible rewards. Mohawk men patrolled the northern woods to monitor French actions, captured prisoners, and remained ready to fight at a moment's notice. Haudenosaunee communities west of the Mohawk Valley, however, remained far removed from potential theaters of direct conflict. As a result, these villages continued to remain generally neutral, and their men seldom offered military services. New York's Indian Affairs secretary, Peter Wraxall, credited Johnson's personal influence over his Mohawk neighbors as the main reason for their change of heart, but Mohawk men received substantial sums of cash, clothing, weapons, and provisions for their auxiliary services. In addition, they demanded clothing and food benefits for their families. Johnson's influence, therefore, was only one factor among many that motivated Mohawk men to assist their British neighbors.³

Johnson maintained detailed records of the war parties he outfitted and the expenses he incurred throughout 1746 and 1747 to ensure his own reimbursement. Several Mohawk men, including Hendrick (Theyanoguin), Paulus (Sahonwagy), Abraham (Canostens), Brant, David, Seth, Isaac, and Gingegoe repeatedly appeared in Johnson's account books. Men acquired new clothing, weaponry, and provisions before departing for any service. They also earned cash payments of ten pounds for the scalps of males over sixteen years of age, five pounds for underaged victims, and twice that rate for prisoners in each age category. As a result, fighting men stood to earn a small fortune capturing or killing the enemy. In addition to the 125 pounds Gingegoe received when his party returned in July 1747, he earned another 375-pound payment for scalps and prisoners the following month. To put the value of these cash payments into perspective, New York allotted only 170 pounds in presents for all the Six Nations in 1755, a figure Johnson criticized as far below expectation or need.⁴

Johnson's account books, filled with cash payments to fighting men, demonstrate the ubiquity of cash in eastern Haudenosaunee communities as men and women creatively adapted to the opportunities of an evolving market economy and the colonial settlements that followed in its wake. As New France and New York competed for fur-trade clients, military partners, and control of territory, the European trade posts at Fort Niagara and Fort Oswego brought manufactured goods closer to central and western Haudenosaunee customers and eliminated longer trips farther east to Albany. The posts, however, curtailed the economic, political, diplomatic, and personal benefits Haudenosaunee headmen and communities had previously enjoyed from gift-giving and reciprocity when they sheltered western travelers through their homeland. With European posts located at strategic passes along their route to eastern markets, western Indigenous travelers no longer needed Haudenosaunee shelter or protection to travel through their homeland. More troubling for Haudenosaunee men hunting for the fur trade, after 1700, competition for high-quality pelts began to shift the fur trade's locus west into the upper Great Lakes region. Consequently, Haudenosaunee men, particularly from Mohawk villages, needed to travel longer distances to engage in the most lucrative hunting expeditions. Yet Haudenosaunee men and women creatively adapted to their new economic and environmental reality and increasingly exchanged their labor for cash to purchase the desired manufactured goods, services, cloth and clothing, alcohol, and even provisions that they struggled to procure through hunting and the fur trade.

Although the escalation of imperial warfare after 1744 opened opportunities for men to gain personal prestige and to earn cash rewards for their military services, warfare circumscribed the ways in which men and women participated in the market economy as peaceful avenues to hunting and trade closed. More important, successive years of military conflict contributed to growing subsistence problems throughout eastern Haudenosaunee communities. Warfare, for example, disrupted the long-standing gendered division of subsistence labor when men could not fulfill hunting or fishing responsibilities while scouting or awaiting orders to march. In addition, Johnson often scheduled important conferences during the agricultural planting season, thereby interrupting normal subsistence cycles because both men and women participated in diplomatic discussions. Marching armies and their supply trains routinely trampled unfenced crops and wild produce that Haudenosaunee women cultivated and gathered. Soldiers and settlers dramatically altered the landscape when they felled trees and cleared rivers to open transportation routes and to grow their own crops for domestic use and the export market. Woodlands provided homes and forage for hunted animals, particularly deer. Clearing that habitat forced deer into new ecosystems farther away and increased the distance for hunting excursions. Altered water routes changed the known habits of fish and other water life, thereby disrupting popular and productive fishing stations. The British also constructed numerous posts along key water routes and near productive fishing stations and then prohibited Haudenosaunee families from engaging in normal fishing practices. Haudenosaunee men and women expected Johnson and the British to provide relief when soldiers or the war interfered with long-standing subsistence practices.⁵

European forts and trade posts, such as Fort Hunter (1712), Fort Oswego (1720), and Fort Niagara (1727), marked significant intrusions into Haudenosaunee homelands and facilitated Europeans claims to geographic space. Beyond the limits of colonial settlements among Mohawk communities, however, few Europeans traveled through Haudenosaunee homelands without proper escorts and guides. As a result, Haudenosaunee communities retained control over their homelands and key geographic spaces and maneuvered to gain monetary and material benefits from the new posts. Several Oneida men, for example, relocated to the four-mile portage between the Mohawk River and Wood Creek, known as the Great Carrying Place. Here, they carried the goods and canoes of traders traveling between Albany and Fort Oswego. In exchange for their physical labor, they earned wages, food, and desired trade goods. During the 1720s and 1730s, various Onondaga men also relocated to key landing places along the path to Fort Oswego where they earned trade goods and wages by working in the market economy. In 1743, when the botanist and explorer John Bartram visited the Haudenosaunee capital at Onondaga, he traveled to Fort Oswego in search of provisions for his return journey to Pennsylvania. He and his traveling companion, Lewis Evans, hired an Onondaga man to take them to Fort Oswego. Their course crossed Onondaga Lake and then traveled down the Oswego River to the fort. Near a portage that bypassed an eight- to ten-foot fall in the river, Bartram stayed at a small village of four or five cabins where Onondaga men sold fish and other provisions to colonial traders and transported their boats and possessions around the numerous falls on the river. Other Onondaga men earned wages to construct houses near the fort.⁶

Farther to the west, Seneca men engaged in the cash economy of the fur trade at Fort Niagara. When Peter Kalm, the Swedish botanist, visited Niagara Falls in 1750, he remarked both on the natural environment and the people he encountered as he approached the fall. As the Niagara River became too swift to paddle against, Kalm described the scene after he and the Seneca guides left the river to ascend “two great hills … one above the other. Here on the carrying-place I saw about 200 Indians, most of them belonging to the Six Nations, busy in carrying packs of furs, chiefly of deer and bear, over the carrying-place.” French officials had remarked on the role Seneca men played in transporting goods over the portage since 1718. Nonetheless, Kalm was amazed by the prolific activity over the nine-mile portage and noted that the men earned a set wage for each pack they transported. Throughout Haudenosaunee territory, men increasingly exchanged their physical labor for desired trade goods and wages.⁷

Along the path between Albany and Fort Oswego, Mohawk and Oneida men expected fair payment for travel through their homelands and responded violently when traders refused to pay proper tribute. In June 1754, for example, traders complained of ill treatment at both Mohawk villages and from Oneida men. Forty-seven traders drafted a formal protest to Lieutenant Governor James DeLancey that outlined the “many hazards and difficulties” they suffered while heading west up the Mohawk River. The traders claimed Mohawk men at Tiononderoge and Canajoharie boarded their boats with “axes, knives ettc and by force take what Rum they think proper … and threatning Murder to any that oppose them.” Farther west, the traders complained that Oneida men also took, by force, what “Rum, stores, and other goods” they desired. Additionally, Oneida men asserted their territorial control over the Great Carrying Place, the key portage between the Mohawk River and Wood Creek along the route to Fort Oswego. When a few colonists attempted to transport the traders’ goods over the Great Carrying Place, and at lower rates, several Oneida men drove the interlopers from the area. The disgruntled traders further informed DeLancey that Oneida men at both ends of the portage “are generally so numerous that we are obliged to submit” to their demands. Traders worried that if they did not surrender to Oneida pressure, they would be “murdered and robbed of everything” they had. As more lucrative fur-trade exchanges moved west of their homelands, Oneida and Mohawk men, indeed, may have become more aggressive in their attempts to retain access to market goods through a cash economy and control of key transportation routes. At the same time, however, traders may have exaggerated the violence to gain colonial intervention and maximize their profits. When outsiders traveled through a nation's territory, offering a gift to the host village helped to ensure safe passage. But when traders proved stingy or ignored protocols, Mohawk and Oneida men boarded the flatboats and took their desired payment in goods. Despite the rude behavior and intimidation traders chronicled along the path through Mohawk and Oneida territory, Lieutenant Governor DeLancey and the Commissioners of Indian Affairs did not raise these complaints with Mohawk and Oneida men or their village leaders. As a result, Oneida and Mohawk actions underscored the ability of Haudenosaunee communities to control access to critical geographic spaces.⁸

In addition to exchanging their physical labor for cash, a few Mohawk men earned compensation for their intellectual labor. In 1749, for example, Canostens of Canajoharie, baptized Abraham Peters, asked Johnson for a salary to reimburse him for his religious work in both Mohawk communities. As Johnson informed Governor Clinton, Abraham “has read prayers for several years past to the Indians in their several Castles, and is much liked by them all.” Johnson considered Abraham's work “of more service than any Minister of ours.” Because Abraham's work prevented him from fulfilling his subsistence responsibilities, he requested monetary compensation to support his family. Sahonwagy of Canajoharie, baptized Paulus Peters, also desired a salary as a schoolmaster after teaching several Mohawk children to read. By 1755, Paulus taught around forty Mohawk children per day. In addition, the Peters brothers, Hendrick (Theyanoguin) and Abraham, routinely translated messages for Johnson to the Six Nations. Consequently, Abraham, Paulus, and Hendrick each found ways to manipulate the religious, educational, and diplomatic goals of their colonial neighbors to earn monetary compensation and prestige from colonial officials, as well as to bring benefits to, and represent the interests of, their communities.⁹

Haudenosaunee women, too, developed creative ways to participate in the emerging cash economy. In the gendered division of subsistence labor, women gathered wild nuts, roots, and fruits. In the early 1740s, colonial traders in New France, New York, and Pennsylvania began to market a natural resource in wild ginseng (Panax quinquefolius), which, they claimed, cured all forms of sickness. Jesuit Joseph-François Lafitau confirmed the discovery of North American ginseng in 1716 with the plant expertise of Mohawk women living along the Saint Lawrence River. The Mohawk women assured Lafitau, through their knowledge and experience, that ginseng roots fulfilled multiple medicinal functions, especially in curing stomach ailments. Medical practitioners in England had long experimented with the Asian variety of ginseng. In 1680, for example, Dr. Robert Wittie reported his success in treating a patient who was “much emaciated, and reduced into a perfect Skelton, a meer Bag of Bones, … being despaired of by all Friends.” After dispensing ginseng several mornings, Wittie witnessed the patient's “Flesh to come again like that of a Child, and his lost Appetite restored, and his natural … Complexion revived in his Cheeks, to the Amazement of his desponding Relations.” Wittie stressed this turn around was not an isolated event. Another miraculous cure involved an unnamed public figure who was “very much pined away, had a Cough and Shortness of Breath, a Quick Pulse, and an intense Heat … with wandering Pains in several parts of his Body, and restless Nights, and no Appetite to Food.” But, after Wittie prescribed ginseng root extract every night, “in a Months time he grew fat and plump, and all his ill symptoms left him, and he is yet alive.” Other English physicians claimed that ginseng root restored one's nature, renewed youth, and improved virility in men and fertility in women.¹⁰

Ginseng grew throughout the shady and mountainous terrain of eastern and southern Haudenosaunee homelands, from where Mohawk women confirmed its growth along the Saint Lawrence River, throughout the lower Mohawk River Valley, and farther south into the Susquehanna River Valley. Once Lafitau announced his findings to a European audience, he recognized the immediate marketability of the wild root to English, French, and Chinese consumers. He worried that if the French government did not move to regulate and control the trade, New Yorkers would seize the opportunity. Ginseng exports, however, did not take off until the late 1730s, after Bartram located the plant in Pennsylvania and began exporting samples to colleagues in England, including Peter Collinson. In February 1739, Collinson informed Bartram that he had “sent some Ginseng roots to China. If they sell well, a good profitable trade may be carried on …. Keep that a secret, and raise what thee canst; for I have an opinion it will turn to account.” English and French merchants sold some of their ginseng in European markets, but the most profitable trade routes ended in China. Ginseng commanded high prices in Chinese markets, including values that exceeded the root's weight in silver or gold. The markup from North American harvesters to Chinese consumers could be as high as 3,000 percent, although average profits at each stage of trade were more modest.¹¹

The rapidly emerging ginseng market offered Haudenosaunee women a unique opportunity to engage in the cash economy. Women previously participated in the market when they prepared or sold the skins, furs, and meat their male relations collected, and they increased their agricultural production for sale or so that men could engage in more extensive hunting expeditions. The ginseng trade directly engaged women in the gathering aspect of their normal subsistence labor. Women expanded their gathering inventory to include the wild root and dedicated more time to collecting it. Because agricultural produce and ginseng both matured in the late summer and early autumn months, women needed to balance and rotate multiple harvesting responsibilities. Frequently they collected ginseng before the subsistence crops ripened to ensure that the ginseng trade complemented, rather than competed with, routine seasonal subsistence practices.¹²

Colonial traders competed aggressively with one another to acquire ginseng and to capitalize on the emerging-market boom. When Peter Kalm visited Québec in August 1749, for example, he found the ginseng trade “very brisk” because “all the merchants at Quebec and Montreal received orders from their correspondents in France to send over a quantity of Ginseng, there being an uncommon demand for it this summer.” Kalm specifically noted that Indigenous residents along the Saint Lawrence River “travelled about the country in order to collect as much as they could together, and to sell it to the merchants at Montreal.” Kalm also observed the consequences of the ginseng boom and high payment for Indigenous gatherers when the “Indians in the neighbourhood of this town were likewise so much taken up with this business, that the French farmers were not able during that time to hire a single Indian, as they commonly do, to help them in the harvest.” Indigenous men and women took advantage of the booming ginseng market to earn higher rewards for their labor than colonial farmers offered to pay.¹³

In the Mohawk Valley, close economic and diplomatic ties between Haudenosaunee residents and William Johnson also enhanced market opportunities and success for both parties. Johnson, for example, outlined specific trade goods, based on Haudenosaunee desire and demand, his London associates should send him in exchange for ginseng roots, most notably cloth and blankets. In addition, Johnson's personal relationship with Haudenosaunee gatherers allowed him to procure better quality ginseng and to dry the roots and send them to market quicker than any of his colonial competitors. With his roots on the market early in the season, Johnson directed his London associates to sell some of his ginseng “to the Highest Market for a tryal, the rest you may sell In England at the best price you Can.” In 1751, Johnson worried that if his ginseng roots “sold under 12 s[hillings] a pound, I shall be a sufferer.” But high market demand brought a selling price between thirty-two and forty shillings per pound. With hundreds of pounds of roots on the market, Johnson earned a considerable profit, and his Haudenosaunee trade partners gained the imported manufactured goods they desired.¹⁴

The successful trade in 1751 encouraged greater participation the following season. When Daniel Claus lived near Tiononderoge in August 1752, for example, he described the “Furore … over the famous Roots” in a letter to Conrad Weiser, Pennsylvania's Indian Agent. Claus explained that he and Weiser's son, Samuel, helped their Mohawk host, Brand, “look for the stuff he is at it all day long, it makes the Mohawk River quite Rich.” Clause added that Johnson had already secured over 1,600 bushels and had been paying forty shillings per pound of green roots and four pounds per pound of dried roots. Children even earned ten shillings per day collecting roots for Johnson. Prices fluctuated, depending on the season, quality of the roots, current market conditions, and the distance Johnson or his representatives needed to travel to procure the collected roots. The proximity of Mohawk gatherers to Johnson's home, as well as high market demand, produced high wages for Haudenosaunee collectors.¹⁵

During the early 1750s, visiting missionaries and diplomats rarely found Haudenosaunee men, women, or children in their villages because they were all away “hunting” roots. According to Reverend Gideon Hawley, who traveled through Mohawk villages on his way to Oquaga, several of his Mohawk acquaintances near Schoharie had spent their entire summer of 1753 gathering ginseng for traders. Ginseng exports the previous year had surpassed all expectations. “But this year,” Hawley reported, “many adventurers or speculators in it were nearly ruined; but the Indians employed in gathering it, got considerably by it, having collected it in great quantities.” Haudenosaunee men and women also traveled long distances to maximize their economic success. Nearly one hundred Cayuga and Oneida men and women, for example, left their homeland and traveled several days to relocate near the Upper Mohawk village of Canajoharie where they gathered ginseng to sell to local traders. Moravian missionaries often joined Haudenosaunee men and women in this search and thanked their Lord for providing for them by making money grow in the forest. Moravians used ginseng as currency to buy provisions, blankets, and other necessities.¹⁶

Although the harvesting of ginseng expanded market opportunities for women, the new trade item threatened to disrupt cultural and subsistence practices. When men joined women in the woods to gather the roots, for example, this blurred the gendered division of labor. In addition, with ginseng and corn having similar maturation dates, men and women weighed the benefits of hunting for roots for significant cash payment or missing out on material and market exchanges during September and October agricultural harvests. But, when other factors interfered with the agricultural season, such as illness that delayed or prevented planting or an environmental crisis that crippled agricultural productivity, cash from ginseng collections offered a means to purchase needed provisions. Furthermore, cash from the ginseng trade allowed men and women to buy manufactured goods, like cloth, blankets, tools, and weapons, that they could no longer procure through the exchange of furs. In a significant difference from the fur trade in which Indigenous customers traveled to European posts for exchanges, colonial traders came directly to Haudenosaunee villages to buy ginseng. Haudenosaunee men and women eagerly awaited the arrival of French and British traders and outlined the goods the traders should bring with them, as well as the goods to keep at home, namely alcohol. Village leaders often wanted to restrict access to alcohol within the village to minimize community disruptions and violence.¹⁷

Although exchanging physical or intellectual labor and engaging in the ginseng market opened opportunities for men and women to participate in the cash economy, these exchanges occurred only a few months out of the year. Fur traders transported their goods, and ginseng came to the market, on a seasonal cycle. As a result, men and women exhausted these specific labor opportunities during a peak season and then slowed production or found other ways to partake in the market economy. Engagement as military auxiliaries, however, offered men a year-round opportunity to earn cash rewards or manufactured goods for their services. In addition, scouts enjoyed independence from colonial oversight and performed their tasks on their own or with men from their communities. Haudenosaunee men also determined the details of their military involvement, such as duration and tasks, and returned home when it suited them.

King George's War greatly increased the opportunity for eastern Haudenosaunee men to turn their physical labor into material possessions or cash. Fighting men received new weapons, repairs for damaged weapons, and cash when they provided their own firearms. They also gained benefits for their families in the form of provisions, or cash to purchase food, and promises of protection should the enemy attack Mohawk communities. Cloth items, from bolts of material for blankets, shirts, skirts, and robes, to finer and printed fabrics for more elegant apparel repeatedly filled Johnson's account books. Numerous entries for paint, ribbons, armbands, rings, and jewelry to decorate one's clothing and body also highlighted their appeal to male allies and their wives, mothers, and sisters. The display of material culture defined and distinguished the wearer's social status and position to an Indigenous and colonial audience. In addition, the distinction in fabric and style of fashion separated war leaders from common fighters and made both groups recognizable counterparts to colonial officials and commoners. War captains desired a different quality and style of clothing from the men they led. Captains, for example, gained ruffled shirts, laced hats, and fine coats, while the men they led only obtained plain shirts. War leaders also wanted a more colorful assortment of clothing to round out their attire, favoring green, red, and blue fabrics. Black fabric remained in high demand for its symbolic and cultural value in covering the dead. Successful fighting men stepped forward to insist on the appropriate attire. The abundance of cloth and clothing entries in Johnson's account books underscored the desire of Mohawk men and women to emulate specific modes of fashion and dress. The incorporation of European cloth for daily attire also reflected the replacement of furs and pelts for many, but not all, clothing items.¹⁸

As a result of their active scouting services, Mohawk families reaped a windfall of rewards. On December 13, 1746, for example, twenty-four Mohawk men earned forty-eight pounds for scouting toward Canada, while the “Warrious’ women” gained twenty blankets and forty large skirts, a value of twenty pounds, and the equivalent of hundreds of dressed and sewn skins. On March 21, 1747, the “Fighters Wives” of Tiononderoge, received fifteen pounds cash to purchase food during their husbands’ absence. The next month, when Isaac, a Canajoharie war captain, led twenty-two of his men against the French for twenty days, their families received fifteen pounds for subsistence. The families of an additional sixteen fighters gained new clothing after the men joined Isaac's party. Once again, in May 1747, the families of Canajoharie's fighting men obtained nearly fifty pounds in clothing and an additional eighteen pounds in provisions. In each of these transactions, Mohawk men exchanged their labor and military skills for clothing and provisions for themselves and their families.¹⁹

Because western Haudenosaunee communities observed a general neutrality and seldom offered their military services during King George's War, Johnson was vague in his record keeping and rarely mentioned those war leaders by name. He recorded, for example, the nondescript “Cajuga Head warriour,” “Senecas gone a fighting,” or “party of Oneidas gone out a fighting,” without identifying the war captains or size of the party. His account of expenses throughout 1747 identified only three non-Mohawk war leaders by name. In June 1747, Johnson provided presents to Sciwatkis and Tussanonda, two Oneida leaders, and delivered provisions to Squshageghtey, an Oquaga war captain. Upon Sciwatkis's death, Johnson offered a wampum belt with an “Indian Scalp in the Room of the Great Oneida Sachem Sciwatkis” to cover his grave and to assuage his family's grief. Johnson recorded the names of these Oquaga and Oneida leaders because he knew them personally through economic and diplomatic connections.²⁰

Although Mohawk fighters obtained clothing and subsistence aid for their families, western Haudenosaunee fighters did not enjoy similar benefits. When Seneca, Cayuga, and even Oneida men patrolled the woods for intelligence or prisoners, they received the appropriate presents, including a new set of clothes, weapons, ammunition, a small per diem, paint, armbands or gorgets, a war feast, and provisions while in service. Their families, however, did not gain new clothing, blankets, or provisions. Instead, western Haudenosaunee families continued to fulfill their own subsistence needs and acquired consumer goods through normal market exchanges or cash purchases. With major military campaigns unfolding in Europe and the main threat for North American conflict focused on the Hudson Valley-Lake Champlain corridor and lower Mohawk River Valley colonial settlements, major disruptions from warfare and marching armies did not reverberate farther up the Mohawk Valley. As a result, men from western villages did not have the same leverage to exchange their labor for greater payment and benefits for their families.²¹

The 1748 treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended King George's War, but imperial competition for control of the North American interior only intensified between the British and the French. By 1750, nearly 2,000 men and their families from Lenni Lenape, Shawnee, Miami, Wendat, and Haudenosaunee nations had settled in the Ohio Country. New France, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and independent traders of ambiguous loyalty also recognized the region's economic and agricultural potential. In June 1749, the governor of New France, Roland-Michel Barrin, the marquis de La Galissonière, sent an expedition into the Ohio Country to expel British traders and to claim the territory for New France. British traders, however, represented only one aspect of New France's problems. During 1749, for example, nearly 150 canoes filled with Indigenous traders allied with New France bypassed French posts and exchanged their furs and skins for British manufactured goods and alcohol at Fort Oswego. Wealthy planters and land speculators in Virginia also organized the Ohio Land Company in 1749 and sent exploratory missions to the region in 1750 and 1751. The Ohio Company directed Christopher Gist to survey and record information about the geographic landscape that would facilitate Virginia's claim to the contested territory. From the Haudenosaunee perspective, the French and British had merged into an equally menacing threat to an expanded homeland that Haudenosaunee fighters had won with mourning war victories.²²

New France responded to British encroachment into the Ohio Country with a series of forts along the portage from Lake Erie to the forks of the Ohio River. Although the French burned and abandoned each of these forts by 1759, the British rebuilt them on the same land, reflecting their strategic placement. A British map of Lake Erie illustrated the growth of French forts in the Ohio Country (figure 6.1). In 1753, the French built Fort Presque Isle and Fort Le Boeuf at both ends of the portage between Lake Erie and the headwaters of French Creek. They moved farther south in 1754 with Fort Machault (rebuilt by the British and renamed Fort Venango) at the confluence of French Creek with the Allegheny River, and Fort Duquesne (rebuilt by the British and renamed Fort Pitt) at the fork of the Ohio River. For Indigenous traders traveling from the upper Great Lakes, the new forts south of Lake Erie shortened the trip to traders at Fort Niagara and in Pennsylvania. The new forts also offered western Haudenosaunee men and women alternate markets to distant Pennsylvania traders. But the main purpose of the new French posts, as evident from their placement, served to intercept Indigenous traders along their paths to British markets in Pennsylvania and to prevent British trespass into the Ohio Country. The French also fortified a missionary settlement in 1749 at Oswegatchie, along the Saint Lawrence River between the foot of Lake Ontario and Montréal. By 1754, as imperial tensions mounted, hundreds of Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga men, women, and children had relocated to the greater protection and security of the fortified Catholic community. Despite the economic and territorial threat these French forts posed to New York's imperial ambitions, New York colonial officials lacked the power and resources to evict the French. When imperial conflict erupted, New France's Indigenous trading partners and religious converts quickly became military allies.²³

FIGURE 6.1. King George III of Great Britain, King George IV of Great Britain, and Edward Braddock, “A map of Lake Erie with the route southward from Fort Presqu’Isle to Fort Cumberland, with inset plans of Fort Pitt, Fort Venango, Fort Le Boeuf and Fort Presque Isle” (1760–1763). Used with permission, British Library Archive.

The return of imperial warfare in 1754 over control of the Ohio Country renewed opportunities for Haudenosaunee men to exploit their value as military allies, and many earned high rewards for their service. In the summer of 1755, the British planned four simultaneous expeditions against the French: Major General Edward Braddock led his army to Fort Duquesne at the fork of the Ohio River; Colonel William Johnson targeted Crown Point at the southern tip of Lake Champlain; Massachusetts Governor William Shirley organized a campaign against Fort Niagara; and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Monckton led an attack on Fort Beauséjour in Acadia. Haudenosaunee men knew that the success of the Fort Niagara and Crown Point campaigns hinged on their military assistance, and they manipulated the needs of Johnson and Shirley for fighters. Shirley recognized his own disadvantage against Johnson, whose personal connections to village leaders and economic ties to eastern Haudenosaunee communities would facilitate the recruitment of their young men into his campaign to Lake Champlain. Shirley countered his lack of personal connections to village leaders and fighting men with promised bounties and cash wages of up to ten shillings per day.²⁴

Paying Haudenosaunee military allies cash wages was not a new concept. In addition to scouting, Haudenosaunee men earned money when they gained intelligence, carried communications, escorted armies, captured enemy troops, retrieved deserters, negotiated the release of prisoners, and transported materiel and provisions to forts. In September 1754, for example, Johnson expressed concern about New York's frontier security and warned Lieutenant Governor DeLancey of the need for constant intelligence. Johnson proposed sending out colonial rangers “together with some of our best Indians (whom I believe may be got for pay).” But, in 1755, as Johnson struggled to enlist and retain Haudenosaunee fighters, he rightly blamed his lack of recruiting success on Shirley's promise of high wages. Village leaders claimed they could not force the young men to join one campaign over another because the fighters retained independence to make those decisions. As the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the North, Johnson believed Shirley's precedent would discourage men from serving unless well-paid and the tactic would only add to Indian Affairs expenses. In addition, men brought their complaints to Johnson when Shirley failed to pay the promised wage. In July 1756, for example, Daniel and Gaweghe, two Mohawk fighters, turned to Johnson for redress after Shirley failed to pay them lieutenant's commissions and the promised daily wage.²⁵

Despite Johnson's concerns, military commanders recognized the superior environmental knowledge and military acuity of Haudenosaunee fighters and did not hesitate to request and pay for their services. In April 1756, when Colonel John Bradstreet worried about the security of his supply train as he prepared to send relief provisions to Fort Oswego, he discussed with Johnson the need for constant scouting and intelligence, adding “there are not any kind of People so fit to give that information as Indians.” Bradstreet requested Johnson provide him with loyal Haudenosaunee scouts and offered “with great pleasure [to] pay them what ever you shall think proper a day or otherwise—fifty at least I should be glad to have and as many of them Mohawks as possible.” Ileas, an Oneida, led the way to Fort Oswego, while Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk scouts protected the supply train and prevented a French attack. Colonel Bradstreet later ordered the payment of more than three hundred pounds to the men who guarded and transported these provisions.²⁶

Eastern Haudenosaunee men eagerly served as military auxiliaries, but they did so on their own terms. They often performed the work of scouts, couriers, transporters, and guides, for example, but they showed far less enthusiasm to engage in combat. They especially disliked fighting kin from Saint Lawrence River Valley villages. French and British commanders complained that Indigenous men often discharged their weapons early or called out, thus giving advance warning of enemy positions. On the eve of the September 1755 Battle of Lake George, Johnson doubted the commitment of Mohawk men to confront kin living in Kahnawake and Kanesatake, villages located along the Saint Lawrence River. As British troops and Mohawk fighters approached the French-laid ambush, a Saint Lawrence Valley war leader shouted to Mohawk Valley fighters that he and his men had come to fight the English “without the least Intention to quarrel or trespass against any Indn. Nation. We therefor desire you will keep out of the way lest we transgress & involve ourselves in a War.”²⁷

Although these tactics, reminiscent of French complaints during their 1680s and 1690s invasions of Haudenosaunee homelands, helped kin to avoid bloodshed, they were not always successful. In the ensuing battle at Lake George, British-allied Mohawk fighters suffered devastating casualties, including Hendrick (Theyanoguin) and several of their principal men. When immediately pressed to rejoin the British, Tacquayanont (Peter) voiced the concerns of Tiononderoge Mohawks. “At first when we were desired to go out,” he recounted, “it was told us we should only serve as Scouts, and in case of the Enemy's approach, we were promised to be led aside, but instead of that, we were placed in the Front of the Battle, and met with a considerable loss of some of our principal Men and Fighters.” Johnson recognized that Mohawk allies were “not so well pleased when … this fatiguing and Dangerous Duty is left to them only.” Scouting and other noncombat positions kept men away from their villages but provided a steady flow of cash and subsistence. Combat, in contrast, endangered the lives of fighting men, engaged kin in imperial conflicts, and threatened the security of family and community.²⁸

As the imperial conflict and stakes for joining the British intensified, Haudenosaunee men expected greater rewards for their families. Their emphasis on cash wages for military service stretched Johnson's patience and depleted his finances. As he reminded his allies, “in former times when we went to war together against the French your ancestors never even thought of Pay.” Johnson tried to convince fighting men that British promises of protection and assistance were sufficient payment. Haudenosaunee leaders, fighting men, and women, however, leveraged their military assistance against British battlefield misfortunes in the early years of the Seven Years’ War in America to win concrete benefits over vague assurances of protection. Haudenosaunee men and women, with children in tow, descended on Johnson's home for provisions while visiting, as well as subsistence support while awaiting harvests and in advance of military service. Men who received new weapons and ammunition used the supplies to hunt for subsistence and trade when possible. Communities with dispersed settlement patterns and smaller housing templates also requested European forts for refuge and protection.²⁹

As fighting men earned cash for a range of services, Johnson attempted to set the wages Haudenosaunee men should accept and repeatedly reminded them of his generosity. During a summer 1756 conference, Johnson rebuked Onondaga, Oneida, and Tuscarora men for accepting wages for daily military service. “It was a bad precedent and wrong in you to accept it,” he argued, “considering the vast quantity of Goods, Arms, and ammunition daily given to you.” Johnson reminded the men that he added to his expenses when he fulfilled village requests for forts and troops and provisioned their families, both at his residence of Fort Johnson and in Haudenosaunee communities. Between July and August 1756, for example, Johnson counted nearly 1,000 visitors to his Fort Johnson home. He provisioned and provided shelter for them, arranged for their access to food on their return journey, sent additional provisions to their villages while residents waited for their crops to mature, and provided the full range of required accoutrements for men ready to march upon his call to action. The visitors reflected the full spectrum of age, gender, and rank among all Haudenosaunee communities as well as representatives from the numerous multinational communities throughout the Hudson and Susquehanna River Valleys. Given these costly benefits, Johnson sought to invoke the principle of gift-giving and reciprocity to pressure fighting men into service as their reciprocal obligation to his generosity. Johnson told Haudenosaunee leaders that their men “should not insist upon any pay, but if pay is insisted upon I think it should be much less.” He wanted military allies to serve for two shillings per day—half the current rate.³⁰

Canaghquiesa, an Oneida leader, responded to Johnson's complaints and his attempts to invoke reciprocal obligations, reminding him that Haudenosaunee men had not pressed for higher pay. Instead, the commander-in-chief of British forces, General Shirley, had initiated this new policy the previous year. In fact, Canaghquiesa proclaimed, Shirley promised men they “should have whatever we asked for that he had money enough.” Canaghquiesa further noted that Shirley had paid the young men very well, “several of them had great sums given to them besides their days pay, and others commissions for which they had a great deal of money.” Captain Bradstreet also promised ten shillings per day the next time he needed assistance to deliver supplies and provisions to the beleaguered Fort Oswego. Haudenosaunee leaders believed their fighting men deserved the extra pay because of the dangerous, fatiguing, and open-ended service. Haudenosaunee men also argued they deserved higher pay than their colonial counterparts because of their intimate geographic knowledge.³¹

Even as Johnson tried to curtail his expenses through reduced wages, Canaghquiesa utilized his role as a village leader and diplomat to shower praise on his colonial patron. Canaghquiesa and fighting men did not attribute their new financial windfall to General Shirley. Instead, Canaghquiesa and the young men associated Lord Loudoun, or Johnson, with this effort to guarantee their livelihood. As Canaghquiesa put it, cash wages were “wisely thought necessary” for young men because they could no longer receive goods through peacetime market exchanges. When Johnson repeatedly advised young men to be ready to join the army at a moment's notice, they could not engage in hunting or trading expeditions to fulfill subsistence and material needs. But cash wages, which their benefactor Johnson had ordered, reflected appropriate compensation to acquire daily needs. More important, the insistence of the young men that they continue to earn the wages highlighted both the importance of cash in eastern Haudenosaunee economies and the understanding that Johnson was fulfilling his reciprocal responsibility to them.³²

As the British floundered on the battlefield, particularly after they abandoned Fort Oswego in August 1756, Haudenosaunee enthusiasm to scout or provide military assistance waned and men demanded daily wages and commissions in advance of auxiliary military services. Before Fort Oswego's destruction, Johnson had enlisted more than 140 men from various communities and claimed to have between 200 and 300 more ready to serve at any moment. But after the unexpected loss, Johnson doubted those commitments. He informed the Board of Trade that the startling loss of the fort “entirely disconcerted all my measures & overset the Pleasing prospects I had, of thoroughly engaging the Indians of all the Six Nations in actual hostilities with the French.” The loss of Fort Oswego also left Captain Thomas Butler with considerable difficulty in enlisting Haudenosaunee scouts. Men demanded cash payments in addition to their daily wage, Butler complained, and “there Seems no Such thing as Sattisfieing the Indians.” Butler had recruited and fought alongside Mohawk and Oneida men for nearly a decade. But his frustrations in August 1756 demonstrated that military service was becoming a market transaction whereby cash began to replace friendship and reciprocity as the primary inducement to assist colonial neighbors, especially with the enemy lurking nearby.³³

In addition to demanding higher wages from Butler, Oneida men questioned British military strategies and preparedness. Canaghquiesa reminded Johnson that Oneida fighters had often warned him of the need protect Fort Oswego. After the attack, Canaghquiesa rebuked Johnson, noting “the French have been too cunning for you & burnt it to ashes.” Canaghquiesa also challenged Johnson's decision to search for the French and their Indigenous allies in Oneida homelands along prominent footpaths. “You are now sending us all to the Carrying place, what good can we do there,” he asked, “at most we can only pluck off a hair from the enemy.” Canaghquiesa recommended redirecting troops far to the northeast and toward Lake George along the Hudson River-Lake Champlain corridor, an area several days distant from Oneida, as well as Mohawk, homes. Canaghquiesa's warnings to guard Fort Oswego underscored his attempt to ensure the protection of his community with a well-defended European fort. When the British burned the fort and fled the area, Canaghquiesa then sought to protect his community by redirecting all military forces away from Oneida homes and families.³⁴

Young men who lived in villages farther to the west took advantage of their distance from Johnson and the Mohawk River Valley to minimize and delay military commitments. Seneca men, for example, capitalized on New France's long-standing economic partnerships around Fort Niagara and early military successes to delay any commitments to Johnson and the British. Johnson's agents in Seneca villages also complained they could not match the generosity of their French counterparts. In November 1755, Myndert Wempel begged Johnson to “procure somewhat more presents to the Indians for the Frenchman [Chabert Joncaire] had given a great gift to the Indians wherefore I was ashamed.” Wempel expressed particular concern after he courted four Seneca headmen for two weeks but could offer them no gifts. In February 1757 Silver Heels, a Seneca village leader, added to Johnson's concerns. “The French,” he informed Johnson, “are indefatigable among all the Indian Nations to the West, and meet with great Success.” With each British military misfortune, New France gained more Indigenous allies and western Haudenosaunee leaders hardened their neutrality. In addition, captured British supplies made it easier for New France to provision her allies.³⁵

Residents at the eastern Seneca community of Kanadesaga, located at the northwest foot of Seneca Lake and farther from Fort Niagara, did not experience the same economic and diplomatic pull to the French as the western Seneca lineage. Village leaders, however, exploited Johnson's desire to counteract French intrigue and persuaded him to build them a fort, ostensibly for their protection. Construction began in May 1756 in a clearing at the base of a hill, an environmental choice that offered the community little in the way of security. Granting permission to build the structure, however, strengthened village ties to Johnson and brought desired goods to the community. The fort, for example, served as a base for a smith, a tradesman always in high demand, and provided access to desired trade goods without the burden of distant travel. In addition, Johnson authorized shipments of corn during a season of scarcity to help relieve subsistence distress. The maneuvering of village leaders forestalled military commitments and gained short- and long-term benefits for their community.³⁶

Although Johnson expected the new post and subsistence aid to produce military auxiliaries, eastern Seneca men, along with their Cayuga and Onondaga neighbors, persisted in avoiding military commitments and often remained in their villages. As Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga men explained to Johnson at a June 1757 conference, “they are threat’ned from Several Quarters, and expect to be attacked in a few Months, tho’ they cannot yet positively learn by what Enemy it will be. Thus, … their own Welfare and Preservation require them to stay at home, and be on their Guard.” Johnson doubted the sincerity of their security concerns. Instead, he attributed British military failures as the cause for their lack of support. As Johnson informed Edmund Atkins, the superintendent for Indian Affairs in the South, “Our Ill Success hitherto hath intimidated them …. Hence, they are not prejudiced in our Favour, but seem to think We are going wrong, and therefore will not go with Us. In short, without some striking Success on our Sides, I believe they will not join us.” Given the string of British military misfortunes, Johnson viewed the neutrality of western Haudenosaunee men and women as the best outcome.³⁷

Seneca leaders continued to leverage their 1,000 fighting men against British losses and inaction to gain community benefits. In December 1757, despite not assisting the British in military campaigns or scouting, Seneca leaders asked Johnson to send them a smith to repair their tools and weapons. They also requested a trader to exchange their furs for clothing. The request for a smith and trader signified the absence of both at the new fort and the call of village leaders for Johnson to make the post complete. In a direct reference to their neutrality in the imperial conflict, the Seneca messengers noted that they had many furs because “none of their young Men have been to War for some time.” Johnson cautioned his superiors against renewing trade relations with Seneca villages because he was skeptical of their loyalty and worried young men would sell British arms and clothing to French posts and to fighting men in the Ohio Country. But, Lord Loudon warned, if Johnson did not oversee a regulated trade, more clandestine exchanges threatened to develop in Pennsylvania. Consequently, Loudon quickly instructed Johnson to send a smith and an assortment of trade goods and reminded him not to miss “an opportunity that may at once … bring back the Indians to our Interest, and … do the King so much Essential Service in his Indian Interest.” Loudon, however, prohibited a trade in guns and only recommended ammunition sufficient to fulfill subsistence responsibilities. While Johnson made military service a prerequisite for protection and provisions for more eastern Haudenosaunee villages, distant Seneca communities retained material benefits from the British without sacrificing their men.³⁸

As Seneca communities capitalized on their neutrality, village leaders of more eastern villages constantly reminded Johnson of their steadfast loyalty, sacrifices, and hardships to demand Johnson fulfill his payment promises and to compel greater rewards. The unwavering support of Tiononderoge and Canajoharie men ensured subsistence aid and new clothing for extended lineages and even entire villages. When Schoharie Mohawk families did not receive a similar disbursement of new clothing, Seth complained to Johnson of the unequal treatment, especially given the firm attachment of his entire community to the British interest. In addition, Seth reminded Johnson, clothing and subsistence aid “was promised them at the Commencement of the War & what they duly had hitherto.” Although Johnson quickly provided the requisite clothing and blamed the delayed delivery on poor weather, Seth advocated for his followers to ensure that they received the same gifts as other loyal communities.³⁹

By the late 1750s, Johnson's account books increasingly shifted to a singular emphasis on cash payments to fighting men. Men earned cash in lieu of clothing, sold their weapons for cash when they owned more than one gun, and received cash to purchase new weapons. Leaders and allies earned cash for their loyalty, continued military service, and, most often, provisions. Johnson also paid for coffins and funerals. Johnson's payments extended beyond the ranks of fighting men to include Haudenosaunee women who earned cash for assembling wampum belts; making shirts, shoes, and snowshoes; selling their guns; and smoking and dressing skins. Women also earned cash when they sold their domesticated animals, particularly cattle. Most payments involved Mohawk women, but women from more western nations also gained direct cash payments from Johnson. In February 1759, for example, an unnamed group of Cayuga women earned cash for making “Indn Shoes” and providing the necessary skins. The next month, two Onondaga women received payment for eight pairs of shoes, and another for smoking and dressing skins. Although women represented only a fraction of Johnson's cash transactions, and most involved Mohawk women, the cash payments demonstrated the adaptability of women to new demands for the products of their labor. As women increasingly received cash in these exchanges, they maintained a level of economic independence with cash on hand to purchase necessary and desired goods.⁴⁰

By the 1740s, the return of imperial warfare that focused on control of Indigenous spaces threatened long-standing Haudenosaunee mixed-subsistence strategies as traders, colonists, and marching armies traveled through and altered environments critical to hunting, fishing, and agricultural production. More important, colonial settlements rapidly expanded westward, following the path of market exchanges up the Mohawk River Valley and with the security of British forts. Before the 1740s, Haudenosaunee communities occasionally suffered devastating agricultural losses from enemy invasions or extreme environmental conditions, such as floods, frosts, or droughts. But in 1743, while traveling from Pennsylvania to Onondaga, John Bartram documented a new cause for crop failures: a parasitic worm that devoured Indigenous cornfields. Bartram reported:

Here I observed for the first time in this journey, that the worms which had done much mischief in several parts of our Province [Pennsylvania], by destroying the grass and even corn for two summers, had done the same thing here, and had eat off the blade of the maize and long white grass, so the stems of both stood naked 4 foot high; I saw some of the naked dark coloured grubs half an inch long, tho’ most of them were gone, yet I could perceive they were the same that had visited us two months before; they clear all the grass in their way, in any meadow they get into, and seem to be periodical as the locusts and caterpillar, the latter of which I am afraid will do us a great deal of mischief next summer.⁴¹

Bartram's testimony outlined the migratory path of this agricultural parasite, most likely cutworms, as it moved from southern and eastern colonial farms to northern and western Haudenosaunee fields. Although Bartram first witnessed the devastation in July 1743, Haudenosaunee villages had suffered two consecutive years of crop failures. Extensive cornfields usually provided sufficient food for the community for the current year, as well as a surplus to guard against future environmental crises for one to two years. But the new colonial parasite of the 1740s devastated successive years of agricultural produce. After Haudenosaunee communities depleted their reserves, they reverted to secondary subsistence strategies and turned to colonial allies and neighbors for food assistance. Flour, vegetables, and meat imported from more distant colonial regions made their way to Haudenosaunee villages. As Bartram noted, New York and Pennsylvania colonists suffered the same agricultural losses to their corn crop, but colonial farms produced a greater variety of grains and vegetables that escaped destruction.⁴²

In addition to the new parasite, epidemics and unfavorable environmental conditions affected subsistence practices and agricultural output. A widespread smallpox epidemic first appeared in the spring of 1756 among Saint Lawrence Valley Indigenous villages and soon spread south. By the summer of 1757, Haudenosaunee leaders and Johnson regularly consoled one another's losses. Epidemics had the potential to disrupt successive years of subsistence practices through delayed planting, hunting, and harvesting. Early frosts in 1758 destroyed Oneida, Tuscarora, and Mohawk fields, as well as agricultural produce in multinational villages along the upper Susquehanna River. These substantial agricultural losses compounded subsistence distress. After the poor harvest, communities faced a difficult winter and spring between 1758 and 1759 and struggled to acquire food. A very dry summer in 1761 meant another season of poor crop production. As environmental disasters followed consecutive seasons of epidemics, communities struggled to feed their residents in the current year and could not replenish their reserves to guard against future agricultural failures.⁴³

The devastating impact of crop failures underlined the important role agriculture continued to play in the Haudenosaunee diet. Visitors often described the rich cornfields near Haudenosaunee villages during years of normal environmental conditions and before parasites consumed growing produce. In 1750, at the main Onondaga village, for example, missionaries passed through a “very beautiful and fertile” country where “Indian corn grows … to perfection.” Women worked together throughout the season in communal fields and tended individual family allotments. Women also gathered wild potatoes, roots, and nuts and cultivated a variety of fruit trees to supplement the mainstay crops of corn, beans, and squash. Men sustained their labor responsibilities in the subsistence cycle. Europeans repeatedly complained when they visited Haudenosaunee villages and found only women and children at home because the men were often away hunting or fishing. Women occasionally joined their husbands, but most remained in the village or traveled to their own resource acquisition sites to tend crops and gardens, look after domestic animals, and care for their children and elderly kin. The valleys in western and southern Haudenosaunee homelands flourished with bear, elk, buffalo, deer, duck, pheasant, a variety of other birds, and occasionally beaver. Men hunted these animals both for subsistence and for the market.⁴⁴

During years of crop failures, fish, especially eel, often provided the primary source of food. Men speared fish with long iron-tipped poles reaching twenty feet in length. When fishing at night, small fires in canoes illuminated the eel and salmon.⁴⁵ Village leaders regulated access to productive fishing stations throughout the Mohawk and Seneca River Valleys and the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger detailed their private management. “It is plain to be seen that they have much order in all their affairs,” he noted. “For instance, each one has his own place where he is allowed to fish, and no one is permitted to encroach on his part. A chief is appointed to each fishing place, and he has his people, who belong to him …. who must render him obedience in matters concerning the whole.” Onondaga headmen, for example, regulated several fishing stations along the Oneida, Oswego, and Seneca Rivers. They determined who fished at these stations, as well as the duration of the season. In the early 1750s, Hatachsogo supervised a fishing station just below the outlet of Oneida Lake, Gajagaja managed the area around a small island in the Oneida River near its confluence with the Seneca and Oswego Rivers, and Tohashwuchdioony presided over a fishery farther up the Seneca River from Onondaga Lake. Visiting missionaries also found Onondaga men fishing at several other popular sites, especially along the numerous bends and falls in nearby rivers and lakes. To maximize their catch, men blocked the river with fishweirs.⁴⁶

In addition to environmental crises and epidemic diseases that reduced agricultural output, the escalation of imperial warfare disrupted male and female subsistence responsibilities and contributed to subsistence distress. Johnson, for example, often organized conferences that competed with, rather than complemented, the agricultural cycle. Immediately following his appointment as superintendent, Johnson planned a grand meeting with the entire Iroquois Confederacy formally to announce his new position. Predicting Haudenosaunee hesitation to attend a meeting during their planting season, Johnson directed his interpreter, Arent Stevens, on the proper response. “If they say they are planting their corn, and should they come now, they would lose their harvest and want provisions,” Johnson ordered Stevens to “assure them that I will take care of them, and will make good to them all their loss occasioned thereby.” Johnson's response revealed his arrogance because he had no ability to provide the subsistence needs of multiple Haudenosaunee communities with hundreds of residents each throughout the year. Johnson's conference schedule, at the height of the planting season, also dismissed the tremendous agricultural output of female labor and undercut the role of women's contributions to important community decisions. More important, when Johnson recommended that Stevens “act with prudence … and promise with precaution,” he hinted at the limits of his generosity. Johnson's direct interference with one season's planting cycle threatened to disrupt subsistence production for the current season as well as the surplus safeguards for successive years.⁴⁷

Although epidemics, unfavorable environmental conditions, and diplomatic conferences interfered with and even crippled the primary subsistence cycle, the need for Haudenosaunee allies to join annual military expeditions and constantly to serve as scouts forestalled the shift to secondary subsistence strategies. When Johnson wanted young men to remain in their villages and prepare to march at a moment's notice, he prevented them from departing for hunting or fishing expeditions. In response, village leaders highlighted their community's sacrifices and hardships to compel greater compensation. Abraham Peters of Canajoharie, expressing the frustration of both Mohawk villages, complained to Johnson of “our young men being ready to go a hunting, [but] being detained by your orders, have nothing to subsist upon, … they want every thing … we pray you to give us what is purely necessary for us.” Military demands also interfered with market opportunities, as Johnson later reminded Major General James Abercromby that “this being now the Hunting Season with the Indians for Deer, those who are hindered from it will expect to be considered for that Disappointment.” Men wanted Johnson to make restitution for lost subsistence and market opportunities.⁴⁸

As the war continued and Indian Affairs expenses climbed, Johnson increasingly exploited the payment of cash wages and subsistence needs of families and communities as a political weapon to force Haudenosaunee men into service. Between March 1755 and October 1756, when military misfortunes saddled the British, Johnson recorded nearly 20,000 pounds in Indian Affairs expenses to recruit and maintain the loyalties of Haudenosaunee fighters and village leaders. Despite this extreme cost, only two Onondaga men provided military assistance during the siege and swift collapse of Fort Oswego deep within Haudenosaunee homelands. Thereafter, Johnson proposed that he distribute diplomatic presents personally and “in such Quantities, and to such Persons, as will actually distinguish themselves in our favour & really go upon service. As circumstances now are I think this method quite necessary … The Indians,” he continued, “are naturally a mercenary People, … and as it is now become necessary to buy their assistance, I apprehend it is best to make a sure Bargain & give to those Indians only who will act with us & for us.” Johnson's recommendation reflected his growing concern over the skyrocketing costs of Indian Affairs expenses and his anger when Haudenosaunee allies failed to meet his expectations of their military obligations. Johnson's proposal represented a significant shift in British Indian policy. If implemented, only loyal allies, not entire communities, would earn rewards for service.⁴⁹

When two Cayuga leaders and fifteen of their men visited Johnson in June 1758, they wanted to exchange packs of skins for some clothing and kettles for their female kin and requested ammunition and a smith to mend their guns. Kaghradodea, the Englishman, reminded Johnson of his village's loyalty to their Covenant Chain allies and their firm neutrality in imperial conflicts since 1701. Following the guidelines of the Grand Settlement of 1701, many Cayuga men tried to remain on the sidelines in the latest imperial struggle while maintaining open paths to multiple trade partners, including the French. Johnson acknowledged their firm attachment to the British but expressed surprise at their distressed condition because the men “had full Leisure for Hunting” for several years. Furthermore, as Johnson informed Kaghradodea, the King required presents be distributed to “such Indians as will go out with me to War against his Enemies. If your Warriors are willing to do this, they shall be fully supplied.” In the meantime, the Cayuga visitors were free to bargain with nearby traders, where the exchanges would be mere commodity transactions and lack the diplomatic and cultural benefits of reciprocal exchanges with Johnson. In response to Kaghradodea's customary request for a smith to mend their tools and weapons, Johnson coolly replied: “Our Smiths are all employed in mending and sharpening the Arms of our Warriors, so that I don’t know any who can spare time to mend yours.” Johnson made clear that neutrality and continued trade with the French were no longer acceptable positions and only men who actively served the British military interest would gain his assistance and support.⁵⁰

Eastern Haudenosaunee communities also faced Johnson's new political pressure. In December 1758, when leading men and women from Oneida and Tuscarora villages complained of their hunger, poverty, and suffering in the aftermath of early frosts that destroyed women's crops, Johnson told them he would “be much readier to relieve you, had [your suffering] been occasioned by your Mens being employed in our Service so as to prevent their Attending [y]our Crops, but as you well know the Contrary.” Although Johnson misrepresented the gendered division of agricultural labor and ignored the environmental conditions that caused the widespread crop failure and ensuing hunger, he directly linked military service to subsistence aid. To reinforce this change in policy, Johnson provided cash to some “lukewarm” Oneida and Tuscarora friends to purchase grain to relieve the immediate emergency and told Canaghquiesa he would send up more provisions in the spring “if you convince me of your deserving it” and “to all who are entituled to them.” Although Oneida and Tuscarora leaders considered subsistence aid a prerequisite to British travel through their territory, Johnson's statements made clear that Haudenosaunee families would receive assistance only after their men had fulfilled his military obligations.⁵¹

When Johnson determined to reduce his expenses and curtail payments to only the most loyal fighters, he dismissed the significant environmental and subsistence challenges that imperial warfare produced with British military travel through and occupation of eastern Haudenosaunee homelands. Military supply trains, consisting of horses and wagons, as well as hundreds of cattle and thousands of sheep, constantly traveled the Mohawk Valley between Schenectady and Fort Oswego. To protect supply lines and to control space, the British constructed new forts along important water routes and then altered river levels with dams, floodgates, and debris-clearing projects. The British produced several maps to illustrate their new forts, to document their alterations of the environment, and to lay claim to the geographic space. These maps highlighted the importance of the Great Carrying Place connecting the Mohawk River to Wood Creek and Oneida Lake, in Oneida homelands (figure 6.2). The British implied their control of this critical pass in 1756 as they felled trees from the thick woods that abounded all around to construction four forts, numerous bridges over the water arteries, several dams, and living quarters for troops, noted as “settlers” on the map. The text in the map, “The Course of the Wood Creek from the Mowhock River at the Onoida or Great Carryng Place to the Onoida Lake,” however, left no doubt that the People of the Standing Stone controlled the space. The mapmaker stated that “there are no other Inhabitants but Indians, and this Country scarcely known by any” before 1755 except a few New York officers and traders who made annual trips to the post at Oswego. After the British burned and abandoned Fort Oswego in August 1756, they feared a French advance into Oneida Lake, up Wood Creek, and then down the Mohawk River to colonial settlements. To slow this French advance, Major General Daniel Webb ordered soldiers to fell more trees to block water navigation between the western terminus of the Great Carrying Place to the Neck, a large crook in Wood Creek located upstream from Oneida Lake.⁵²

FIGURE 6.2. King George III of Great Britain, King George IV of Great Britain, Daniel Webb, and William Shirley, “The Course of the Wood Creek from the Mowhock River at the Onoida or Great Carrying Place to The Onoida Lake. Representing the Forts built on the Carrying Place by order of General Shirley: and Afterwards destroyed by Major General Webb” (1758). North is to the bottom. Used with permission, British Library Archive.

The military maps draw attention to the numerous sharp curves in Wood Creek that slowed water flows and created predictable pockets for Oneida fishing success. The British, however, needed more dependable, smoother, and faster transport of provisions and material to military posts. Therefore, they worked to manipulate water flows along these arteries. The British controlled the volume and speed of the river and prevented the pooling of water in pockets with dams and forced water downstream quickly with opened floodgates. British officers also prohibited Haudenosaunee families from blocking river passes with their large fishweirs. These environmental alterations interfered with the conditions that made favored fishing stations productive and threatened a critical subsistence resource, particularly because fishing often provided the only reliable food source when agricultural production failed to meet community needs.⁵³

Farther down the Mohawk River, where Mohawk families located their villages, the same military maps that reflected environmental alterations to Oneida homelands showed the westward expansion of colonial homes and farmsteads along the banks of rivers and creeks under the protection of Fort Hunter at the mouth of Schoharie Creek (figure 6.3). Settler expansion from the Hudson River Valley in the east to above the western Mohawk community of Canajoharie in the west stripped the local environment of trees to construct and heat new homes. Settlers and soldiers at forts also felled trees to cultivate their extensive agricultural fields. This open landscape eliminated the wooded environment that attracted large animals, particularly deer. In the past, when crops had failed, men reverted to secondary subsistence strategies that emphasized hunting and fishing. Soldiers and settlers, however, now competed with Mohawk hunters and fishers for fewer deer in the woods and more elusive fish in the rivers. Mohawk men also relayed the exasperated complaints of their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters when the military's domestic animals trampled community fences and consumed growing corn. The construction of fences around Mohawk crops underscored the destructive impact of free-ranging colonial domestic animals. Even worse, when women left drying corn unattended, soldiers often walked off with these essential winter provisions. Village leaders begged satisfaction from Johnson when soldiers or nearby settlers failed to behave like good neighbors. Young men often handled matters themselves and killed offending domestic animals to compensate for the agricultural losses of their female kin. Although the British routinely complained about this violence against their domestic property, colonial officials refused to remove squatting settlers or prohibit the felling of trees on Haudenosaunee homelands.⁵⁴

FIGURE 6.3. King George III of Great Britain, and King George IV of Great Britain, “A map of the route between Albany and Oswego; drawn about 1756, on a scale of 2 miles to an inch” (1756). Original is in four sheets. Used with permission, British Library Archive.

As successive years of imperial warfare, military demands on Haudenosaunee men, British supply lines, altered river levels, denuded landscapes, and competing colonial settlements threatened long-standing mixed subsistence practices, widespread hunger and distress set in. Steady cash wages for military service compensated men for some of their lost subsistence labor but could not overcome the challenges of widespread or successive years of agricultural scarcity. When Johnson failed or refused to provide needed provisions, men and women took their hunger to nearby British fort commanders. The steady stream of food requests overtaxed the British ability to feed hungry families and added to Indian Affairs expenses. In December 1758, after early frosts ruined their harvest and Johnson turned them away with insufficient provisions, Oneida and Tuscarora families turned to British commanders at Fort Herkimer and the Great Carrying Place for more than six hundred rations. In August 1760, when the military expedition against Montréal departed from a rebuilt Fort Oswego, hundreds of Haudenosaunee men and their families marched with Johnson's campaign. Major General Jeffery Amherst, commander-in-chief of Great Britain's armies in America, noted the good spirits of the Indigenous allies, but the numbers of noncombatants exceeded his expectations and stressed his food supply. Johnson calculated more than 1,300 allies, including more than 600 women and children. Amherst awaited their return homeward, “the Sooner the better,” he noted, because “the Consumption of such a Number of Useless Mouths is Considerable.” Fighting men, however, continued to demand food relief for their families, even if only temporary, in exchange for their promise of military service.⁵⁵

After the British captured Fort Niagara and Québec in 1759 and Montréal in 1760, Haudenosaunee men lost their leverage to earn cash and provisions for military service. Furthermore, General Amherst wanted Johnson to restrict the supply of weapons and ammunition to Indigenous men. Instead, Amherst expected former allies to return to hunting and the fur trade to acquire subsistence items and material possessions. Haudenosaunee men and women, nevertheless, continued to expect provisions at conferences and personal diplomatic meetings. Johnson worried that those attending the spring 1762 conference would “be much more numerous than I either desired, or expected” because dry summers had resulted in two successive seasons of crop failures. Unless he received an emergency shipment of pork and flour, Johnson worried about how he would subsist the attendees. To reduce the number of people to feed, Johnson requested that only leading men attend. He wanted women, children, and young men to remain in their communities. Despite his request, more than four hundred Haudenosaunee men, women, and children attended the April conference. Village leaders balked at Johnson's attempt to bar women from the conference, for women played an active role in supporting their male kin and their British allies. Although women remained silent during the official proceedings, they wielded great power in community decisions and male speakers conveyed their position. Johnson's attempt to prevent women from attending diplomatic meetings challenged their important social role, and both men and women protested this move.⁵⁶

The escalation of imperial warfare after 1744 opened opportunities for Haudenosaunee men and women to exchange their physical labor and loyalty for individual and community benefits. Men exploited their geographic knowledge and skills as military auxiliaries to earn cash, clothing, and provisions for themselves and their families, while women manufactured and sold items critical to the war effort. War captains received their gifts directly from Johnson, rather than hereditary village leaders. This direct exchange between war captains and Johnson challenged the monopoly of hereditary village leaders who controlled access to manufactured goods and solidified reciprocal and hierarchical relationships within their communities. War leaders, however, maintained the long-standing Haudenosaunee ethic of gift-giving and reciprocity by redistributing cash and manufactured goods to the men who marched with them, thus creating loyal followers. Although this new social structure circumvented the power of hereditary village leaders as the distributors of gifts, it also absolved hereditary leaders from making delicate military decisions.⁵⁷

Johnson's direct distribution of provisions and clothing to fighting men also infringed on the power Haudenosaunee women wielded in military affairs. Although women did not normally participate on the battlefield, they played key roles in peace and war. For example, when a family suffered the loss of a loved one, female family members determined how to assuage the grief. Before engaging in a mourning war, young men awaited the approval of the matrons or their female relations. When women approved of warfare, they provided provisions, necessary clothing, snowshoes during winter, and pouches to carry ammunition. Withholding those necessities reflected the matrons’ disapproval. Women also determined the fate of any captives taken in a mourning war. But Johnson, and the shift to cash payments to fighting men, eliminated women from the warring process down to the last detail. Johnson provisioned, clothed, supplied departing war parties, paid wages for service, and paid bounties for scalps and prisoners. Nonetheless, women demonstrated their approval for the British military effort when they manufactured shoes and snowshoes, assembled wampum belts, and maintained their loyalty to the British. Fighting men and matrons also distinguished scouting and other auxiliary services for payment from the cultural imperatives of mourning warfare. By the mid-eighteenth century, Haudenosaunee men increasingly engaged in military activities to satisfy economic and subsistence needs of family and community, rather than to fulfill traditional mourning war demands.⁵⁸

Warfare, however, closed peaceful avenues to hunting and trade, circumscribed engagement in the market economy, and complicated the gendered division of labor in Haudenosaunee mixed-subsistence practices. When men engaged in extensive military pursuits, or remained at home waiting to march, they failed to fulfill their hunting and fishing subsistence responsibilities. The influx of cash offered a short-term solution because it enabled families to purchase subsistence items men no longer procured. The absence of men and their subsistence labor, however, increased demands on women's agricultural production during successive years of epidemics that delayed planting, severe weather conditions that wilted crops before harvest, and a new parasitic worm that devoured entire fields. Moreover, marching armies, long supply trains, European posts, and expanding colonial settlements dramatically altered environments critical to Haudenosaunee land use practices as well as their connection to nature. Throughout the Mohawk River Valley, settlers, soldiers, and Haudenosaunee hunters and fishers competed for a reduced number of animals in a less bountiful environment. Although animals continued to abound throughout western Haudenosaunee homelands, hunters needed ammunition and depended on colonial smiths to repair damaged guns. Men who assisted the British military effort expected cash, provisions, and clothing for themselves and their families as a fair exchange for military service. Just as Haudenosaunee villages expected Indigenous travelers who passed through their homelands to European markets to pay tribute, they expected the same of their imperial and colonial neighbors in the form of desired manufactured goods, weapons, provisions, and protection.⁵⁹