PAYTA KOOTHA
As part of an effort to employ this blog, not only a source of news about current events at Pricketts Fort, but also as a resource of information about the early history of the lower Monongahela valley, and of the Virginia frontier generally, I will be posting a series of excerpts from John M. Boback’s Ph.D dissertation, Indian Warfare, Household Competency, and the Settlement of the Western Virginia Frontier, 1749 to 1794.
The first several postings will be taken from Chapter Three: “Shawnee Culture and the Ceremonialism of Violence”. The basis for any understanding of the frontier history of this region must begin with an understanding of this region’s indiginous tribes, and of all such tribes, the fiercest resisters against European incursion, and the ones who figure most prominently in the history of frontier Virginia, were the Shawnee.
John Boback was once a blacksmith here at Prickett’s Fort. He went on to receive a Ph.D in History from West Virginia University, and is currently director of education at Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village located near Avella, Pennsylvania.
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~~ (the 1st of 3 excerpts from Chapter Three: “Shawnee Culture and the Ceremonialism of Violence”)
“Noble Savage” vs. “Warlike Brute”
The Euro-American conception of Native Americans has long been characterized by a strange duality. On the one hand, many Europeans have looked upon Indians as Rousseau’s noble savage, a people who lived in the state of nature, untainted by the complexities and corruptive influences of “modern” life. Yet at the same time, others have scorned the Indians due to their alleged tendency toward violence, lack of “civilization,” and “heathen” religious beliefs. In 1683, for example, William Penn claimed that the Indians’ propensity for revenge and ability to conceal “their own Resentments” even exceeded that of the Italians.(91) Likewise, the missionary David Jones who visited the Shawnees during the early 1770s not only described their “cruelty to captives,” but also explained how “it was not uncommon for [Indian] women to hang or drown their children, when they did not like them, and never . . . so much as bury them.”(92) More than two hundred years later, the publishers of a book on the eastern frontier described the Shawnee Indians on their book cover as being “warlike.”(93) Another recent author went even further when he characterized the Iroquois as “the Nazi of the Eastern United States” who ruled the Indian nations they conquered “with an iron fist.”(94) Regardless of whether a European regarded an Indian as a “warlike brute” or a “noble savage,” it resulted in the same condescension and marginalization. After all, a “noble savage” is a “savage” nonetheless.
Shawnee culture key to understanding Shawnee violence
Although brutality and violence indeed existed within Indian societies, just as it did among those of Europeans and Africans, popular conceptions of that violence understandably fail to place it within a proper cultural context. Whenever the Indians committed particular acts of violence related to warfare, blood vengeance, torture, or the taking of captives, it typically involved deeply held ceremonial practices and belief systems. Thus, in order to better comprehend the rationale that underlay Indian-perpetrated violence, we must first acquire an understanding of who the Indians were, how they organized themselves socially, how they provided for their fundamental needs, and why they reacted as they did to the incursion of Euro- American settlers into the upper Ohio Valley during the eighteenth century. In the process, it becomes apparent that even though the Indians sometimes committed acts of great violence, by no means were they the animalistic savages that haunted the imaginations of colonial settlers and their descendants. As the dominant Indian group on the western Virginia frontier, particular emphasis is placed upon the Shawnees. Although all Shawnees spoke the same language and shared a common culture, they possessed a very decentralized political structure. When compared with relatively well-integrated Indian groups such as the Cherokees and Iroquois, the Shawnee nation barely existed as a unified tribe. The Shawnees comprised five major political divisions, or septs, that occasionally acted in concert, but more often acted autonomously.
Five major Shawnee septs
Although the spelling varies somewhat according to the source, the septs are frequently written as the Thawegila, Chalagawtha, Kispokotha, Maykujay, and Peckuwe. In many ways, each sept acted as a tribe unto itself. Not only did they have their own principal chiefs and councils of elders, but they also controlled their own diplomatic relations with other Indians and Europeans. In addition, each sept customarily populated a primary village named after that sept. Thus, the principal village of the Chalagawtha Shawnees was usually called Chillicothe while that of the Thawegila Shawnees was called Sewickley. The fact that the Shawnees migrated widely throughout the colonial period accounts for the many occurrences of “Chillicothe,” “Sewickley,” and “Piqua” on modern maps of Ohio and Pennsylvania.(95)
The different septs characterized
The traditional structure and functions of the various Shawnee septs are not entirely clear. According to Shawnee mythology, each sept originated long ago as an individual whose descendants now collectively bear that person’s name. Although the eighteenth-century Shawnee leaders Black Hoof and Tenskwatawa both denied that the septs had been created to serve a political purpose, other informants have described how each sept theoretically fulfilled a separate political role within the overall Shawnee nation.(96) For example, Thomas Wildcat Alford, a college-educated Shawnee born shortly before the Civil War, explained that the Thawegila and Chalagawtha, being the most powerful of the septs, “had charge of political affairs and all matters that affected the tribe as a whole.” Consequently, the principal chief of the nation had to come from one of these two dominant divisions. The Peckuwe maintained order and oversaw the celebration of religious matters. The Maykujay, on the other hand, had charge of food, health, and medicine for the nation. Lastly, the Kispokotha’s realm of responsibility included warfare and the training of warriors.(97) Considering that the various septs often lived hundreds of miles apart, the system of having discreet spheres of control as described by Alford may have been more of a theoretical ideal than a political reality. Some anthropologists theorize that Iroquois attacks into the Ohio Valley during the mid-seventeenth century may have disrupted the Shawnees before the various septs had forged a stronger tribal identity. If this be the case, the largely autonomous septs may represent an earlier stage of Algonquin political and social evolutionary development.(98)
Shawnee chiefs appointed by Elders
The civil leadership of each Shawnee sept consisted of a principal chief along with an informal body of elderly men who acted as councilors. Chiefs typically held their position for life provided they possessed competency and good character. Upon the death of a chief, one of his sons inherited the position. Being the firstborn did not necessarily guarantee a chieftainship because the elders did not consider birth order when selecting a new leader among a group of siblings. In cases where a deceased chief lacked a worthy male heir, the elders appointed an unrelated man as the new chief. A parallel system of lesser chiefs and councilors served within the numerous villages to provide civil leadership on the local level.(99)
Shawnee women enjoyed greater equality than European women
Shawnee women enjoyed much closer equality with Shawnee men than their counterparts in European society. This egalitarianism extended even into the political realm. Wives, mothers, and sisters of male village chiefs often served as “peace women” whose responsibilities included the oversight of domestic activities, such as planting crops and preparing feasts, as well as advising male chiefs and counselors. Rarely, female chiefs sat as full members on the council of elders or even served as interim village chiefs while the elders selected who would succeed a deceased male leader. Although women exerted as much power in tribal politics as men, their power tended to revolve more around informal advising and influencing than it did holding formal positions of leadership. Additionally, Shawnee women had the sometimes difficult task of trying to persuade a “renegade” warrior to “lay down the hatchet” if he seemed intent on pursuing warfare contrary to the wishes of the village.(100)
Village chiefs and war chiefs
The Shawnees augmented the leadership of village chiefs with a system of war chiefs whose primary responsibilities involved defending their villages from attack, launching attacks against enemies, and advising the village chiefs on matters relating to land cessions and international affairs. Unlike the largely hereditary position of being a village chief, a Shawnee man who wished to become a war chief had to earn that distinction on the field of battle. Three requirements had to be fulfilled by the prospective war chief. First, he must have personally led at least four raids into the territory of his adversary. Second, on each of these raids, at least one scalp must have been taken. And third, all of the warrior’s followers must have returned to their village unharmed. Upon the fulfillment of these perquisites, a feast would be held to celebrate the warrior’s achievements and to formally recognize him as a war chief.~~~ Thus, only by successfully attacking his enemies and taking scalps could a Shawnee man gain the qualifications needed to become a war chief.
~~~ to be continued.
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Notes
91. “Penn to The Committee of the Free Society of Traders, 1683″, in Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware, 1630-1710, ed. Albert Cook Myers (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1953), 232.
92. David Jones, A Journal of Two Visits Made to Some Nations of Indians on the West Side of the River Ohio, in the Years 1772 and 1773 (Chillicothe: Ohio, Ross County Historical Society, 1946), 17.
93. William Hintzen, A Sketchbook of . . . The Border Wars of the Upper Ohio Valley: 1769-1794, Conflict and Resolutions (Manchester, Conn.: Precision Shooting, 1999), back cover.
94. John A. DeMay, The Settlers’ Forts of Western Pennsylvania (Apollo, Pa.: Clossen Press, 1997), 42.
95. James H. Howard, Shawnee! The Ceremonialism of a Native American Tribe and its Cultural Background (Athens: Ohio University Press, 107-8; Jerry Clark, The Shawnee (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1977), 33.
96. C. C. Trowbridge, Shawnese Traditions, ed. Vernon Kinietz and E. W. Voegelin, Occasional Contributions from the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, no. 9 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1939), 1-8.
97. Thomas Wildcat Alford, Civilization: As Told To Florence Drake (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1936), 44.
98. Clark, Shawnee, 33.
99. Trowbridge, Shawnese Traditions, 11.
100. Trowbridge, Shawnese Traditions, 12-23; Clark, Shawnee, 36.
101. Trowbridge, Shawnese Traditions, 12; Howard, Shawnee!, 108.
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Doug Wood comments: “Excellent choice of an historical treatise to draw from. Boback’s dissertation is worth a read. Plenty of references to explore further. Thanks for delving into it and posting it for us.”
Excellent choice of an historical treatise to draw from B. J. Boback’s dissertation is worth a read. Plenty of references to explore further. Thanks for delving into it and posting it for us.