Indians and British Outposts in Eighteenth-Century America

2. Anxious Hospitality: Loitering at Fort Allen, 1756–1761

2 Anxious Hospitality Loitering at Fort Allen, 1756–1761 Of the many occupations Benjamin Franklin pursued during his storied life, one of the less acclaimed was that of a frontier fort builder. Franklin ’s achievements in philosophy, politics, diplomacy, and science are so significant that his contributions to Pennsylvania defense during the late1750s Delaware War have paled in biographical comparison. But given the unexpected developments at Franklin’s Fort Allen, it is fitting that it was planned and built by an individual known more for his diplomatic legacy than for his martial expertise. Constructed as part of a chain of defensive outposts to protect Pennsylvania’s towns and cities from Indian threats, Fort Allen became instead a diplomatic way station, a moderately successful trading post, and even a rum-soaked watering hole. In fact, the fort became many things, but it never really fulfilled its original purpose in Pennsylvania’s frontier-defense plans. Fort Allen’s mission, like that of Fort Loudoun and other forts scattered throughout British North America , was defined not only by those who planned and built it but also by its occupants and visitors. Fort Allen was not exceptional in this regard. It does, however, provide an excellent example of how the collision of provincial military imperatives, backcountry settlement ambitions, and Native American cultures helped define and complicate an outpost’s mission. Much of the tension that defined Fort Allen’s brief existence on the northern slope of Pennsylvania’s 150-mile-long Blue Mountain ridge stemmed from its frequent Indian guests. Situated aside the Lehigh River near a vital passage through the ridge, the fort was sure to attract native 60 · Indians and British Outposts in Eighteenth-Century America passersby. It was especially well placed as a stopping point for Indian diplomatic visitors to the Lehigh Valley towns of Easton and Bethlehem. During such visits, native travelers expected the full hospitality of the fort’s garrison and commandant, as they would of any hosts throughout Indian country. Fort Allen’s importance as a native diplomatic checkpoint and resting place eventually outweighed its original function as a frontier base for punitive expeditions against belligerent Delawares. With hundreds of Indians visiting each year, and with a garrison that never exceeded one hundred men and seldom exceeded fifty, it is understandable that Indian visitors helped define the identity and nature of the small wooden stockade . Meant to reassure local settlers and to bring stability to the liminal geography that divided the upper Susquehanna River Indian country and British Pennsylvania, Fort Allen produced unexpected and ironic results. Instead of keeping Delawares away from the Blue Mountain region and its European settlers, it attracted them. Instead of regulating unscrupulous British traders, it helped bring them a ready, native customer base. Fort Allen became ultimately an Indian place as well as an English one, where the most famous resident was not Franklin or some other provincial celebrity but the renowned Delaware chief Teedyuscung. Colonial exigencies and anxieties merged with native notions of hospitality and reciprocal obligation at Fort Allen, producing a place of anxious hospitality for both Europeans and Indians.1 Northampton County in the mid-1750s might have seemed a place of both promise and tension to many Pennsylvanians. Rapid demographic expansion and ethnic and religious diversity characterized the region; indeed , Northampton County itself was relatively new, as were many of the towns south of Blue Mountain. A boom in town building had created a minor white population explosion in the Blue Mountain region after 1730, though most of this urbanization was located west of Reading and the Schuylkill River. In Northampton County the principal towns were the new county seat of Easton, founded by Pennsylvania’s proprietary Penn family in 1752, and the German Moravian spiritual capital of Bethlehem, established in 1741. Easton lay at the fork of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers , about sixty miles north of Philadelphia. It was a planned town, laid out in a grid pattern surrounding a central square, similar to the design of recently established Reading. The strategic spot had been settled since the 1730s, and the town already had hundreds of inhabitants at its inception, including English, Scots-Irish, and German immigrants. Easton’s position Map 2.1. Blue Mountain region of Pennsylvania, 1755–1761. 62 · Indians and British Outposts in Eighteenth-Century America at the fork of two major waterways made it a natural trade center for goods moving...