Treaty: Fort Stanwix I, July, 1768

We've dealt with this treaty in connection with others that set the boundaries and provided for land concessions from various tribes on the frontier.  Today, we'll deal with the first Treaty of Fort Stanwix, signed at Fort Stanwix near what is now Rome, New York.  Specifically, we'll look at the backstory of the treaty.

The Treaty of Fort Stanwix put a formal end to two conflicts between Natives, specifically the Iroquois, and Colonial governments (read, Sir William Johnson, the Penn family of Pennsylvania), and representative of four colonies, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia.  In frontier America, land speculation was big business.  Though the Royal Proclamation of 1763 had forbidden White settlement beyond the Appalachian mountains, many prominent colonial Americans had already staked out claims to what is now Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky.  Further, being an Indian agent was lucrative business. Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent for Indian Affairs, Northern Department had long used his connections to the Iroquois (read Joseph and Molly Brant), to acquire title to thousands of acres of Iroquois land in New York.  The Iroquois believed that, by rights of conquest during the 17th century Beaver Wars, they had control over hunting rights in the Ohio Valley.  Johnson wasn't the only one with his eye on this lucrative land.  The Penn family in Pennsylvania also hoped to capitalize on Ohio real estate.

The Seven Years War had ended in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris, in which France ceded possession of all its North American territory to Britain, without any specific mention of Native rights to any lands whatsoever.  Several Native tribes who had supported the French rose in what became known as Pontiac's War, 1763-1766.  One of their concerns was the increasing number of Settlers on Native hunting range beyond the Appalachian Mountains, which the British were supposed to police but didn't have the resources or the intention to.  There was only one solution to this problem, one which benefitted wealthy investors in America but created only further war on the frontier.  Johnson, as Indian Agent, called a counsel at Fort Stanwix.  Whether by accident or design, he chose to invite only the Iroquois Confederacy to the counsel.  The Cherokee, Ottawa, Lenape, Cherokee and other tribes who used the Ohio Valley as hunting range were not invited or consulted. 

The Treaty of Fort Stanwix pushed the Royal Proclamation line back into the Ohio Valley.  Instead of the line being the watersheds of the Appalachians, it now ran from near modern-day Pittsburgh (Fort Pitt), and followed the Ohio Valley to the Tennessee River, ceding what is now Kentucky and West Virginia to Virginia, adding several thousand acres to what is now Pennsylvania, and taking in most of modern-day Ohio.  The Iroquois received 10,000 pounds sterling as well as an annual annuity of trade goods in receipt of this purchase.  English officials in London decided to ignore this overstep of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and called the newly acquired land the New Purchase.  The Shawnee were furious.  They wouldn't cede their rights to the Ohio Valley until the Treaty of Camp Charlotte which ended Dunmore's War of 1774.  The Cherokee went through two treaties, Hard Labor in 1768 and Lochaber in 1770, to cede their rights to this same land.  Meanwhile, Settlers continued to pour onto Native land and conflicts continued.