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Chapter 10 Onas, the Long Knife: Pennsylvanians and Indians After Independence
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Chapter 10 Onas, the Long Knife: Pennsylvanians and Indians After Independence In April 1792 the war chief Red Jacket led a delegation of Seneca Iroquois to the Federal capital at Philadelphia. Their main business was with the President and Congress, but the Native leaders also paid a courtesy call on Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Mifflin. Standing beneath Benjamin West’s portrait of Penn’s Treaty in the statehouse council chamber, Red Jacket ad‑ dressed his host as “Brother Onas Governor,” using the Iroquoian translation of the Pennsylvania founder’s surname that had long been employed to refer to governors of the province and state. The sight of Onas’s portrait, Red Jacket declared, “brought fresh to our minds the freindly conferences that used to be held between the former governor of Pennsylvania and our tribes and the love which your forefathers had of Peace.” It was, the Seneca leader told Mif‑ flin, “still our wish, as well as yours to preserve peace between our tribes and you and it would be well if the same Spirit [prevailed] among the Indians to the Westward and thro’ every part of the United States.”1 A little over a year later, the fragility of such hopes for peace on the fron‑ tiers of the United States became apparent in another encounter between In‑ dians and Pennsylvanians; then a quite different name was used to describe William Penn’s successors. On what started as a pleasant afternoon stroll near the British post at Detroit, Philadelphia Quakers William Hartshorne and John Parrish heartily greeted a half‑ dozen young Ojibwas who had re‑ cently arrived from Michilimackinac. Perhaps amused at the Pennsylvanians’ awkward attempt at saying “How do you do?” in trade pidgin, the Indians initially returned the salutation, but when Parrish and Hartshorne extended Onas, the Long Knife 203 their arms, they “drew back and refused to shake hands, and said ‘Shemock‑ teman Boston.’” The word that Parrish rendered Shemockteman meant, he explained, “‘Long knives,’ a name . . . given to the Virginians, as a warlike people, which is now spread throughout the whole country[;] as the States unite in one they are all looked upon to be ‘Shemocktemen.’” Seeking to set the record straight, the Quakers— true children of the idealized Onas if ever there were any— protested that they were “from Philadelphia,” but the Indi‑ ans would hear nothing of it.2 The Ojibwas “soon grew furious,” Hartshorne recalled, “calling us in their way, long knife, and with furious countenances, and violent gestures.” The Quakers believed themselves lucky to escape the conversation alive.3 The names and imageries applied to Pennsylvanians in these two en‑ counters—Onas the just founder and Shemockteman the treacherous killer—could not contrast more starkly. Clearly, in the early 1790s some disagreement Back of the Statehouse, William Birch, The City of Philadelphia, in the State of Penn‑ sylvania North America; as It Appeared in the Year 1800 (Philadelphia, 1800). Library Company of Philadelphia. An Indian delegation peacefully interacts with Pennsylva‑ nians outside the building later known as “Independence Hall.” 6 GMT) 204 European Power and Native Land existed between Pennsylvanians who wrapped themselves in the mantle of Onas and Indians who insisted they were Long Knives. But Red Jacket’s invo‑ cation of the memory of William Penn also suggests a more profound contest between Pennsylvania officials and Indian leaders and among Native peo‑ ples themselves over the very meaning of the title Onas. During the decade after the close of the American War for Independence, Indians seeking some way to live, hunt, and trade on lands claimed by Pennsylvania repeatedly at‑ tempted to call the commonwealth back to the supposed ideals of its founder. Despite their efforts, however, and despite Pennsylvania officials’ preference for the pen to the knife in deeds as well as rhetoric, little distinguished the state’s basic policies from those of the Confederation and Federal govern‑ ments. Thus, in the view of many Native people, Onas took his place among the other Long Knives of the new republic. * * * Not surprisingly, most Pennsylvanians who wielded political power or cul‑ tural influence in the 1780s and 1790s liked to think that they remained true to the spirit of Onas. “We hope,” Mifflin told a delegation of Creek leaders visiting Philadelphia in 1790, “the conduct of Pennsylvania, from the land‑ ing of William Penn to this day, has unequivocally proved her love of justice, her disposition for peace, and her respect for the rights and happiness of her neighbors...