The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America

6. “Mixt Nations” at the Head of the Bay: The Iroquois, Bacon’s Rebels, and the Peoples in Between

134 chapter 6 “Mixt Nations” at the Head of the Bay THE IROQUOIS, BACON’S REBELS, AND THE PEOPLES IN BETWEEN In the spring of 1692, a mysterious band of Indians arrived at the head of Chesapeake Bay. They were an alarming collection of “strange Indians ,” who seemed to be led by a Frenchman with the letters M C tattooed to his chest. Residents of Cecil County, Maryland, where the Susquehanna River drains into Chesapeake Bay, believed that this Frenchman was the notorious Michel Costeene. His arrival coincided with a report from New York describing how a French and Indian force, including Costeene, had devastated New England, resulting in the “slaughter and death of many hundred souls.” Folks in Cecil County believed that Costeene epitomized the evils of France in America, for he had crossed over profound cultural and ethnic divides. He had embraced savagery by marrying into an Indian community that now considered him their kinsmen. For the English, Costeene’s actions led to social disintegration because he had abandoned civilization, and as such he represented man in his primal state. Costeene was an agent of “violent disorder.” French, Catholic, and kin to the Indians with whom he traveled, Costeene’s arrival terrified local Englishmen.1 To make matters worse, Costeene’s band now lived on Bohemia Manor, an estate owned by a Dutch colonist–turned–Maryland settler named Augustus Herrman. Herrman had lived at the head of the bay for many years and had chosen to remain there after 1664, when the English seized control of Dutch possessions in North America. Costeene and a host of Seneca , Shawnee, and Susquehannock newcomers asked Herrman to advocate for them before colonial officials in Annapolis. The newcomers made “MIXT NATIONS” AT THE HEAD OF THE BAY / 135 it clear that they “desired peace with this province & that they might bear [word illegible] trading with us.” Hoping for a stake in this lucrative trade, Herrman brought their request to the capital. Maryland’s leaders made it clear that the head of the bay could not and would not become a haven for dispossessed Native migrants and their French intermediaries, and Herrman left without the license to trade that he desired. He failed, at least in part, because Englishmen remained ambivalent about men such as himself . Many of them were important players in the Indian trade along the lower Susquehanna River and the Delmarva Peninsula. English residents of Cecil County trafficked in stories about rival European powers bent on conspiring with Native peoples to halt their progress. Herrman must have been aware of these stories. Since 1664, his 4,000-acre estate, Bohemia Manor, had grown, in spite of rumors about his loyalties.2 The alleged Michel Costeene had fallen victim to one such seventeenthcentury whisper campaign. His accuser, a man named Henry Thompson, had deliberately led colonial officials astray. Thompson had survived a previous French and Indian attack when he lived in New England, and he wanted to implicate the new arrivals. Fortunately for the Frenchman and the Indian community he represented, Thompson’s neighbors challenged his understanding of the person and the “strange Indians” traveling with him. The Maryland Colonial Council admitted its mistake, making clear that the accused was not Michel Costeene, “the grand Enemy of the English.”3 He was, in fact, Martin Chartier. And while he was not guilty of any crime in the English-speaking world, French officials wanted him dead. Maryland’s colonial officials feared Chartier and the “strange Indians” traveling with him. As people on the move, it was impossible to discern the intentions of these refugees, and the English vigorously interrogated Chartier as a result. Through him, they learned that the Shawnees had abandoned the Illinois country in 1688, when for unknown reasons their alliance with the Illinois and the Miamis dissolved. Their expulsion triggered a five-year exodus from the Great Lakes. According to Chartier, “They were two years traveling to the Southward.” Perhaps in search of their relatives, these Shawnees lived in the South before arriving at the head of the bay.4 Chartier’s testimony certainly helped the Shawnee cause. For the English, it was crucially important that the Shawnees had migrated to Maryland from somewhere in the Southeast, where, from their perspective, Native peoples had broken from the French alliance. Both the origins and the extent of their migrations remained a mystery to them. All 136 / THE LURE OF...