The Balance of Power in North America, 1794
Not around here much lately, I know. The beginning of the school year, a lingering summer project, and really depressing public occurrences have all played their roles. Today, however, let me share something I found in an old newspaper — I look at those sometimes — that fits into a theme I have worked into Common-Place before: the central and often-overlooked place of Indian affairs in the politics and policy of the Founding era.
The item comes from the New Year’s Day, 1794, issue of Greenleaf’s New York Journal, that city’s most important Democratic-Republican paper. It gives an account of the fighting strength of all the Native American peoples that the U.S. government knew anything about at the time. The tribal names do not quite match up with the ones in use today, and it would difficult to assess the accuracy of the numbers, but the proportions are fairly eye-popping. The unnamed officials thought they were facing more than 58,000 Indian warriors at a time when (according to a message from War Secretary Henry Knox), there were less than 4,000 troops in the whole U.S. army! I guess it is no wonder a frontier military build-up (and Indian war) was the biggest project of Washington’s administration, besides the public finance system that paid for it.
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Now playing: The Whigs – Give ‘Em All A Big Fat Lip
There is an almost identical census in Henry Trumbull’s HISTORY OF THE INDIAN WARS IN NORTH AMERICA (1846), p. 185. Trumbull identifies the date of the list as 1794, and the source as Benjamin Hawkins; my suspicion is that he was Greenleaf’s Journal’s source as well. My assumption is slightly problematic, because Hawkins did not, to the best of my knowledge, attend any Indian treaties between 1786 and 1796 – he was a U.S. Senator for much of that period. But Hawkins started accumulating information about the North American Indians at the Hopewell conference in 1785-86, and I would guess that he continued to do so by asking Indian diplomats visiting New York and Philadelphia (either directly or through intermediaries) for information on their numbers, their customs, and their neighbors. Incidentally, many of the larger nations in this census (e.g. Missouris, Missisaugas, Pinai [probably Pawnee]) didn’t live within the United States in 1794.
Comment by David Nichols — September 24, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
Imagine, now, with a fantastic view on a lake with the mountains as a backdrop. What it is, would this view so appealing? It is the sum of small details, the water, the trees, the rock mass, etc
Comment by dini videolar — August 4, 2011 @ 2:35 pm
These come together to create a larger view.
Comment by rüyada görmek — August 4, 2011 @ 2:36 pm