No Useless Mouth

Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution

Rachel B. Herrmann

• Editore: Cornell University Press
• Anno: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781501716126
• Argomento: Historia
• Categoria: Historia militar y marítima

"Rachel B. Herrmann's No Useless Mouth is truly a breath of fresh air in the way it aligns food and hunger as the focal point of a new lens to reexamine the American Revolution. Her careful scrutiny, inclusive approach, and broad synthesis?all based on extensive archival research?produced a monograph simultaneously rich, audacious, insightful, lively, and provocative." ? The Journal of American History

In the era of the American Revolution, the rituals of diplomacy between the British, Patriots, and Native Americans featured gifts of food, ceremonial feasts, and a shared experience of hunger. When diplomacy failed, Native Americans could destroy food stores and cut off supply chains in order to assert authority. Black colonists also stole and destroyed food to ward off hunger and carve out tenuous spaces of freedom. Hunger was a means of power and a weapon of war.

In No Useless Mouth, Rachel B. Herrmann argues that Native Americans and formerly enslaved black colonists ultimately lost the battle against hunger and the larger struggle for power because white British and United States officials curtailed the abilities of men and women to fight hunger on their own terms. By describing three interrelated behaviors—food diplomacy, victual imperialism, and victual warfare—the book shows that, during this tumultuous period, hunger prevention efforts offered strategies to claim power, maintain communities, and keep rival societies at bay.

Herrmann shows how Native Americans, free blacks, and enslaved peoples were "useful mouths"—not mere supplicants for food, without rights or power—who used hunger for cooperation and violence, and took steps to circumvent starvation. Her wide-ranging research on black Loyalists, Iroquois, Cherokee, Creek, and Western Confederacy Indians demonstrates that hunger creation and prevention were tools of diplomacy and warfare available to all people involved in the American Revolution. Placing hunger at the center of these struggles foregrounds the contingency and plurality of power in the British Atlantic during the Revolutionary Era.

Thanks to generous funding from Cardiff University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

PART ONE

Power Rising

CHAPTER 1

Hunger, Accommodation, and Violence in Colonial America

After years of trading with Indians, traveling among them, and having sex with them, Irish fur trader and land speculator George Croghan could assert that hungry Native Americans resembled hungry Europeans. When asked, “Is the Appeal of the Indians for food, greater or less than the Europeans?” he answered, “I have Never observed thire appetites to be Greater than ours, unless after Liveing a Long Time very Scanty or without food … particklerly after a Debach of Drinking.” He claimed that Indians ate no more than their European counterparts unless they had gone on a drinking binge—consuming alcohol that British officials had provided as a diplomatic gift, or that unscrupulous traders had supplied to con Indians out of skins or land. Croghan was responding to a set of queries presented by a man named Dr. William Robertson, of Edinburgh, who was writing a multivolume history of the Americas. Croghan had spent three decades interacting with Illinois and Ohio Valley Delawares, Miamis, Ottawas, Shawnees, and Wyandots as deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs, although he was retired from this position by the time he wrote to Robertson in 1773.¹

Other English colonists described Indians whose appetites might have shocked Croghan, depicting them as pitiable, helpless, and hungry. Non-Natives lacked a consensus about Indian hunger because multiple discourses of Native hungriness existed: that of the hungry and useless civilian; that of the warrior using hunger as a metaphor before proving his military usefulness; and that of the Native woman whose utility Europeans struggled to understand, because Native women shouldered the responsibility for producing crops and preventing hunger at a time when Europeans believed it inappropriate for women to farm. Between the 1500s and 1700s, two varying approaches toward dealing with food and hunger—accommodating and violent food-related acts—allowed inconsistent ideas about hunger to form, which in turn influenced how Natives and non-Natives exchanged food and destroyed it.²

Before the Revolution, Native Americans and Europeans enjoyed a relatively equal degree of power, but in the realm of hunger prevention, non-Native intervention failed to improve Europeans’ bargaining position. Europeans and Indians gave and received edible items in ways that fit into their other diplomatic interactions. From the decades after the arrival of Columbus to the mid-eighteenth century, food functioned together with the alcohol, furs, trade goods, and wampum that Indians and Europeans imbued with practical and symbolic meanings. These cross-cultural dealings ensured the existence of a type of Native and non-Native diplomacy called forest diplomacy—and thus of peace. Food sharing, like other practices, could work within the framework of a commodity-exchange economy and a gift-exchange economy. The overlap between these two economies permitted creative misunderstandings and cooperation, while also fostering conflict.³

Cooperative food exchange was paralleled by battles over commodities, including the destruction of crops and attacks against domesticated animals. Europeans employed victual warfare against other Europeans during military conflicts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; in North America, Indian warriors, soldiers, and colonial civilians practiced victual warfare. Whereas food diplomacy continued to change during the colonial period, the use of victual warfare remained relatively stable: it was a way for colonists and Indians to fight each other. The participants, however, did shift, because Europeans mostly stopped using victual warfare against each other while continuing to employ it against Indians. The absence of victual imperialism during this period underscores the relative evenness of power among colonists and Indians, and a significant power imbalance that favored enslavers over the enslaved. Mainland colonists did not practice victual warfare against enslaved Africans because they did not need to; they simply controlled access to food. Slaveholders ensured that bondpeople went hungry by restricting consumption and limiting their abilities to use land to grow garden produce.

Discourses of hunger buttressed contradictory ideas about usefulness. In the eighteenth century the Swiss-born military theorist Emer de Vattel described useless mouths when writing about sieges and civilian populations. If generals hoped to reduce “by famine a strong place of which it is very important to gain possession, the useless mouths are not permitted to come out,” he explained.⁴ His definition encompassed civilian women and children and was tied to intertwined ideas about war and famine. By the eve of the American Revolution, some of the men responsible for Indian affairs believed that Native children and women—and some Indian men—were hungry, useless mouths. Other British Indian agents, like George Croghan, assumed that Indian appetites were similar to those of Europeans, while also admitting the necessity of symbolically distributing large quantities of food at key moments to secure useful military assistance from Native allies. Without the knowledge to definitively assess and address Native hunger, and often lacking the know-how to conduct other diplomatic rituals, European negotiators depended on Indians to guide them, and Native power continued to grow.

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To understand how this shifting baseline of hunger shaped and was shaped by food-related customs, it is necessary to examine the broader diplomatic efforts of the colonial period. Many English officials based their cooperative approaches on Iroquois protocols, and then copied them when meeting with other Indians. Iroquois practices stemmed from the ideas of Gayaneshagowa, on which the Iroquois League was founded, and Guswenta, which emerged after contact with Europeans. Deganawidah, the Iroquois prophet whose history is chronicled in several conflicting legends, created the Iroquois League on six principles expressed in three terms: peace, righteousness, and civil authority. Together, these comprised Gayaneshagowa, or the Great Law of Peace.⁵

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Gayaneshagowa allowed Indians to present a neutral face to the Dutch, French, and English while cultivating non-Native relationships, serving on military campaigns in ways that advanced Indian interests, limiting Iroquois deaths, and replacing dead kin with captives. Even when allied to competing European empires, Iroquois warriors agreed not to attack other Iroquois. Guswenta became an extension of Gayaneshagowa that applied to Europeans with whom the Iroquois wished to deal. Guswenta acknowledged that Natives and non-Natives could maintain friendship and peace by not interfering in each other’s government, religion, or lives. It enabled the Iroquois to teach Europeans to use forest diplomacy to create recognizable but differently interpreted practices—mourning ceremonies, the smoking of peace pipes, the exchange of wampum, the use of metaphors, and the dispensation of alcohol, trade goods, and food goods.⁶

At least since 1645, those whom death left behind had performed a mourning ceremony that metaphorically covered graves, wiped tears from mourners’ eyes, and (usually) prevented the proliferation of violent reprisals. When Europeans met Indians they took part in this condolence ceremony before moving on to the metaphorical brightening of the chain of friendship and a rehashing of past agreements. Only then did participants begin new business. Sometimes during such meetings, as in the region near the Mississippi River, people shared a calumet, or peace pipe. Southeastern Creeks and Cherokees occasionally attached the pipe to a white eagle-tail fan, or “white wing,” which they held while delivering speeches. Speechmaking, and the figurative language and metaphors employed therein, featured prominently at these gatherings. Metaphors helped people communicate at the same time that they opened the door to misunderstandings when interpreted in different ways.⁷ The Dutch, following Iroquois direction, called themselves “brothers” to the Iroquois in order to nurture kin relationships, while the French governor accepted the title of “Onontio” (“father”). Once the English defeated the Dutch in the Anglo Dutch Wars and took over New Netherland in the 1660s, they too assumed the role of brethren—albeit less convincingly—as they competed with the French for Iroquois trade. “We are all unanimously determined forever hereafter to hold fast the Covenant Chain, & live in peace & friendship with the English,” said Cayugas at a 1770 meeting. The Iroquois famously described their relationship with the British as a silver chain (previously a chain of iron, with the Dutch) which became known as the Covenant Chain.⁸

Other Indian metaphors abounded. Creeks and Cherokees let Europeans know they had failed at diplomacy by portraying poor relations as crooked or red roads, and sent positive messages by describing amicable feelings as straight, white paths. Cherokees talked of their “nakedness” not because they lacked clothing, but because they sought trade goods to conspicuously consume. Speechmakers described taking up hatchets, passing them on to allies to encourage them to take sides—as the Delaware Captain White Eyes did at a 1776 meeting with the Iroquois—and burying them at the end of conflicts. Stockbridge Mahicans and Iroquois Onondagas talked about bad birds that spread rumors of discord. Edmond Atkin, who became superintendent of Indian Affairs in the southern district, described himself to Catawba Indians as “the King’s Mouth” to indicate his ability to speak for colonists in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia. Atkin positioned British officials as useful mouths who recited speeches to convey authority.⁹

Wampum made from seashells (which women and children gathered, men fashioned, and women strung) featured heavily during such oratories, from New England to the middle colonies to the southeast. The display of a new wampum belt or string accompanied each idea or section of a speech, and its appearance is often recorded in manuscript documents with the phrase “a string.” Speakers used the amount of wampum to connote importance—large belts signified crucial messages—and the color to convey peaceful or violent sentiments; black wampum, for instance, suggested death or war. Returning a belt without proffering a new one rejected the speaker’s proposal. In 1768 Sir William Johnson, superintendent of Indian Affairs in the northern region (and Edmond Atkin’s counterpart), worried about the “verry dangerous tendency” of “Several Belts” circulating in Indian country.¹⁰

Of these many diplomatic practices, the exchange of trade goods was what Europeans struggled the hardest to learn. Trade goods may have served as mnemonic place markers that enabled better recall when memorizing long talks. An Indian’s refusal of goods, like his rejection of wampum, also served a diplomatic purpose: Indians accepted medals as a gesture of allegiance, but returned them to suggest dissatisfaction or severed unions. In South Carolina, trade was so important that a trader marked the start of Cherokee country with the trade depot at Keowee, the first of the Cherokee Lower Towns. Between depots, traders and officials endeavored to protect goods from rain or snow—“a piece of Oil Cloth” sufficed—and drivers were supposed to carry extra “Horse Shoes, Nails, Hammer, and spare Ropes” in the event of accidents. There were many different types of goods, including guns, gunpowder, and assorted weaponry. A 1758 report from Pennsylvania listed Stroud mantles, stockings, knives, shirts, silver truck, wampum, gartering, and vermillion among the items given to Indian warriors as “presents” in return for their military service.¹¹

As is clear from the fact that Indians received “presents” for military contributions, the trade diplomacy that was part of forest diplomacy could function in a gift-exchange economy or a commodity-exchange economy—which at times blurred together and created disagreements about Indians’ usefulness. In a gift-exchange economy, participants are repeatedly allied, interdependent, and of similar rank. Gifts are passed down, and participants cannot reject a gift. Although something is expected in return, the exchange symbolizes “something for nothing.” In a commodity-exchange economy, people are temporarily allied, independent, and of different rank. Goods are individually owned and kept. The giving of goods precedes the acquisition of material wealth: it is a “something-for-something” trade.¹²

Early European colonists viewed trade as commercial, and so disliked the Indian practice of using trade to seal alliances in a gift-exchange economy. British, Dutch, and French fur traders encouraged Indians’ participation in a commodity-exchange economy by taking their furs in return for cash or goods. In this second system, trade goods became a type of payment.¹³ When Indians came to William Johnson asking to be “pitied”—to be given goods to strengthen their alliance with the British without expecting reciprocity—Johnson distributed goods and then petitioned Natives for military aid; he insisted on a tradeoff. Sometimes officials withheld goods from southern Indians until after a military engagement, underscoring the use of goods as compensation. During the 1760s a group of Cherokees and Catawbas learned that they would receive “large Presents” only after a particular “Campaign as a Reward for your good Services, and a signal Mark” of King George III’s friendship. Despite Europeans’ efforts, Native Americans retained power in these relationships. Iroquois Indians used the market for furs to play Europeans off of each other, thus managing to procure premium trade goods. Sometimes, they even demanded bespoke items.¹⁴

Natives and non-Natives also acted as if trade diplomacy operated within gift-exchange economies. During the early colonial period Europeans found themselves obligated to reciprocate gifts that Natives offered because—as the seventeenth-century Indian leader Wahunsenacawh (also known as Powhatan) reminded colonist Captain John Smith—Indians maintained a strong hold on desirous commodities, from edible corn to valuable copper, and better control over potentially hostile indigenous populations. Trade-good exchanges allowed power to flow through goods, but more importantly through the kin networks and personal connections that gift exchange created. Upon receipt of some goods Native Americans forged relationships—redistributing gifts to other Indians as marks of esteem, prestige, and evidence of their own political authority. The Dutch grumbled but took part in a gift-exchange economy by giving trade goods as material necessities to maintain commerce; the French gave gifts with more enthusiasm because their regulated fur trade meant Indians received lower prices for their furs and needed additional incentives to sell to Frenchmen. In 1755, one man wrote to William Johnson and said that because “the frenchman had given a great gift to the Indians,” he found himself “ashamed” and asked Johnson for “somewhat more presents.” The English presented gifts to compete with the French. The overlap between these two economies resulted in balanced power dynamics.¹⁵

At the heart of these negotiations, misunderstood exchange economies, and diplomatic relationships was...

Indice dei contenuti

• Introduction: Why the Fight against Hunger Mattered
• Part One: Power Rising
• Part Two: Power in Flux
• Part Three: Power Waning
• Conclusion: Why Native and Black Revolutionaries Lost the Fight
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliographic Note
• Notes
• Index