George Croghan
George Croghan was an Irish-born fur trader in the Ohio Country of North America who became a key early figure in the region. In 1746 he was appointed to the Onondaga Council, the governing body of the Iroquois, and remained so until he was banished from the frontier in 1777 during the American Revolutionary War. Emigrating from Ireland to Pennsylvania in 1741, he had become an important trader by going to the villages of Indigenous Peoples, learning their languages and customs, and working on the frontier where previously mostly French had been trading. During and after King George's War of the 1740s, he helped negotiate new treaties and alliances for the British with Native Americans.
Croghan was appointed in 1756 as Deputy Indian Agent with chief responsibility for the Ohio region tribes. He assisted Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern District, who was based in New York and had strong alliances with the Iroquois. Beginning in the 1740s and following this appointment, Croghan amassed hundreds of thousands of acres of land in today's western Pennsylvania and New York by official grants and from Native American purchases. Beginning in 1754, he was a rival of George Washington for influence in Ohio Country and remained far more powerful there for more than 20 additional years. During the American Revolutionary War in 1777, he was falsely accused of treason. He was acquitted the following year but patriot authorities did not allow him back in the Ohio territory.
Ohio's recorded history begins with Croghan's actions in the mid-1740s as fur trader, Iroquois sachem, and go-between for Pennsylvania, according to historian Alfred A. Cave. Cave concludes that the treason charge that ended Croghan's career was trumped up by his enemies. Western Pennsylvania became the focal point in August 1749 when Croghan purchased 200,000 acres from the Iroquois, exclusive of two square miles at the Forks of the Ohio for a British fort. Croghan soon learned that his three deeds would be invalidated if part of Pennsylvania, sabotaged that colony's effort to erect the fort, and led the Ohio Confederation to permit Virginia's Ohio Company to build it and settle the region. Late in 1753 Virginia sent George Washington to the Ohio Country, who would eventually end Croghan's influence there.
Braddock's Defeat in 1755 and French control of Ohio Country, which they called the Illinois Country, indicating the area of their greater settlement, found Croghan building forts on the Pennsylvania frontier. Following which he manned the farthest frontier post in present-day New York as Deputy Indian agent under Sir William Johnson, called the "Mohawk Baron" for his extensive landholdings and leadership with the Mohawk and other Iroquois. Croghan briefly lived until 1770 on a quarter of a million New York acres. He resigned as Indian agent in 1771 to establish Vandalia, a fourteenth British colony to include parts of present-day West Virginia, southwestern Pennsylvania, and eastern Kentucky, but continued to serve as a borderland negotiator for Johnson, who died a British loyalist in 1774.
While working to keep the Ohio Indians neutral during the Revolutionary War, Croghan served as Pittsburgh's president judge for Virginia and chairman of its Committee of Safety. General Edward Hand, the local military commander, banished Col. Croghan from the frontier in 1777 on suspicion of treason. Despite his acquittal in a November, 1778 trial, Croghan was not allowed to return to the frontier. His death in 1782, shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War, received little if any notice. Although often quoted by historians, the story of Croghan's 30 years as the pivotal figure in Ohio Country history is only found in the handful of biographies.
Early life and career
Little is known of Croghan's early life, including the names of his parents. He was born in Ireland around 1718. The best evidence for Croghan's age is found in the treasonous Filius Gallicae letters, written early in 1756 by an otherwise anonymous author. "France's friend" claimed to be nearly 38 years old, among other self-descriptions that pointed to Croghan, but a secret British investigation exposed the fraud. Croghan testified to his Irish origins in meetings in London in the 1760s. Croghan is a corruption and Anglicization of an older native Irish surname Mac ConchruachaApparently Croghan's father died young and his widowed mother married again, to Thomas Ward. Croghan emigrated as a young man from Dublin, Ireland to the province of Pennsylvania in 1741. His mother and step-father, his half-brother Edward Ward, and cousin Thomas Smallman also emigrated, the men working for him in America. Among relatives remaining in Ireland were a merchant, Nicholas Croghan ; an aunt, Mrs. Smallman; and George's grandfather Edmund Croghan.
Within a few years Croghan became one of Pennsylvania's leading fur traders. A key to his success was establishing trading posts in Native American villages, as the French traders did, and learning their languages and customs. At the time, the usual British practice was to set up a post at a site for their own convenience, generally at a major crossroads, and wait for Native Americans to come to them. Croghan learned at least two Native languages, Delaware and probably Seneca, whose territory extended into what colonists called Pennsylvania. They also had hunting grounds in the Ohio Valley. These were the languages of the two major nations of Native Americans in the region.
Croghan also learned Native American customs, rapidly adopting the practice of exchanging gifts when he met with the people. He established his first trading base and wintered in a mostly Seneca village at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River on Lake Erie. During the early years, Croghan's primary business partner was William Trent, also a trader. The son of the founder of Trenton, New Jersey, Trent likely supplied capital to acquire trade goods and set up their business.
Marriages and families
Croghan married in the 1740s and had a daughter, Susannah Croghan. He later married again, while serving as Deputy Indian agent to Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District. His second wife was a Mohawk woman, Catherine, daughter of Mohawk chief Nickus Peters. Their daughter Catherine Croghan would assume her mother's hereditary role as head of the Turtle clan. She later was the third wife of Joseph Brant, the prominent Mohawk war leader who led his people during their migration and settlement in Canada on lands granted by the Crown after the American Revolutionary War. Brant's sister Molly was a long-term consort of Sir William Johnson, so Croghan was doubly connected to influential British and Mohawk families in the East. Elizabeth Brant, a daughter of Joseph Brant and Catherine Crogan, married William Johnson Kerr, a grandson of Sir William Johnson and Molly Brant.King George's War, 1744–1748
Britain's blockade of French ports made the few French trade goods reaching Ohio Country prohibitively expensive; this resulted in a bonanza for the Pennsylvania British traders that alarmed the French. They knew that Native American trade and diplomacy were closely linked, and Croghan's activities from his base on the Cuyahoga River threatened French influence among the regional natives. As Croghan expanded his trading network westward toward Detroit, then held by the French, they encouraged French-allied Native Americans to attack him.The British trader quickly took advantage of wartime conditions, establishing new posts at the Wyandot village of Sandusky and the Miami village of Pickawillany, tribes that had previously traded with the French.
His partnership with Trent was temporarily suspended when the latter joined the military to serve in King George's War. The two men bought property on Conedogwinet Creek in present-day Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Croghan developed a plantation there which served as his home and base of operations from about 1745 until 1751.
In April 1745 the Seneca protected Croghan from capture, but elsewhere French-allied Natives robbed a canoe-load of Croghan's furs. Croghan was adopted by the Seneca and in 1746, according to his testimony before the Lords of Trade in 1764, was one of their hereditary sachems among the 50 chiefs comprising the Six Nations' Onondaga Council. Already on it was William Johnson, the future British Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District, Croghan's superior. Their principal French competitor for influence among the Native Americans in the Ohio region was Philippe-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire, son of the French fur trader Louis-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire, another Seneca appointee to the Onondaga Council two decades earlier. That these men were members of the tribes they represented cannot be overemphasized in understanding their roles in American history.
Early in 1747, Seneca and Wyandot warriors murdered five French traders at the Wyandot village of Sandusky. This was the start of a regional Indian revolt against the French fomented by Croghan. The Wyandot chief Nicholas Orontony led it at first. He was followed by Memeskia, known by the French as La Demoiselle, who was a Piankeshaw Miami chief.
Unsuccessful in driving out the French, the participating bands became more closely aligned with the British. Reports claimed that Croghan had encouraged the uprising so that the Natives would trade with him and not the French. Old Briton relocated to Pickawillany on the Great Miami River, where Croghan built a stockade and trading post.
Aided by local Iroquois chiefs Tanacharison and Scarouady sent to oversee the Mingo and dependent Ohio Country nations, Croghan organized the Ohio Confederation of the region's tribes in 1748; they lit a "council fire on the Ohio River, independent of the Six Nations." Greenwood believes this was Croghan's initiative, as shown by earlier and subsequent events.
At the same time Croghan brought the Miami into an alliance with Great Britain, formalized in a July, 1748 treaty at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Andrew Montour, a conference interpreter, became Croghan's closest associate until his death in 1772. The other interpreter, Conrad Weiser, had been appointed as British Indian agent for Pennsylvania.
Weiser held a conference in August 1748 at Logstown, on the Ohio River near its confluence in today's western Pennsylvania, to inform the recently allied tribes of the Ohio Confederation gathered at their capital that Britain had signed a peace treaty with France ending the war. As a result, the English had no more war supplies for them and he distributed gifts instead. Pennsylvania approved Weiser's recommendation that the colony appoint Croghan as its negotiator with the Ohio Country Indians. His success in that role should surprise no one.
The French attacked pro-British tribes left hanging by the peace without arms and ammunition to defend themselves. Celeron de Bienville led a 1749 expedition to claim the Ohio Valley for France and drive out the English traders; Governor James Hamilton, sent Croghan to Logstown to investigate. Days before Celeron reached Logstown, its chiefs sold Croghan in the area, excluding at the Forks of the Ohio reserved for construction of a British fort.. Biographer Wainwright said gaining this huge amount of land was "a momentous event in his life," a gross understatement of its impact on history, namely the otherwise unlikely penetration of Virginia into Ohio Country.
Virginia's Ohio Company, which acted on behalf of the Commonwealth, sent agents Col. Thomas Cresap and Hugh Parker into the region, who made overtures to the Miami at Pickawillany. In a November,1749 letter to Pennsylvania's governor, Croghan offered to oppose them. Not long thereafter he learned that his in Indian grants were against Pennsylvania statutes, as the colony tried to protect the natives, but were permitted in Virginia. By 1750 he and Montour were aiding the Virginia Commonwealth, guiding its scout Christopher Gist on a tour of Ohio Indian villages.
Croghan had already informed Pennsylvania Governor Hamilton that the Ohio Confederation wanted a British fort at the Forks of the Ohio. During a Logstown conference at the end of May 1751, he formally recorded the request and sent Andrew Montour to the Pennsylvania Assembly to confirm it. Montour, however, denied that the Indians wanted a fort, claiming that it was all Croghan's idea. The colony's plans for a fort evaporated as Pennsylvania "defaulted its leadership in the West to Virginia's Ohio Company."
Croghan protested and among other things had Montour retract his testimony before the Pennsylvania Assembly, but no one believed it. Evidence of the underhanded charade is found in the Native American conference held in June 1752 at Logstown, with Croghan serving on the Indian Council and Andrew Montour acting as translator. The Ohio Confederation gave Virginia's Ohio Company permission to build a fort and settle one hundred families on in today's Western Pennsylvania. Immediately after the conference, a French force led by Charles Langlade made a Raid on Pickawillany, killing a few British traders and 13 Miami, including Old Briton.
Early in the spring of 1753, Canada's Governor Duquesne "opened his campaign to drive the English out of the Ohio Valley." That October during a conference held at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Scarouady officially appointed Croghan as the representative of the Ohio Confederation in communications to and from Pennsylvania, and authorized him to receive its gifts for the tribes. His biographer Wainwright says this suggests that he organized his own appointment.
When the year ended with 21-year-old George Washington making his diplomatic journey to the French at Fort Le Boeuf, Croghan, about 35, had been operating in Ohio Country for twelve years, and was the leading figure among its British traders, Native American tribes and bands, and colonial agents. Soon after Washington returned from delivering Virginia Governor Dinwiddie's summons to the French, Croghan was in Ohio Country gathering intelligence for Pennsylvania, helping to build the Ohio Company stockade commanded by William Trent, and supplying the Indians with food, rum, and weapons. When the French reached the Forks of the Ohio early that spring, Croghan's half-brother Ensign Edward Ward was in charge of the garrison and forced to surrender.