George Croghan - King George's War, 1744-1748

King George's War, 1744-1748

Britain's blockade of French ports made the few French trade goods reaching Ohio Country prohibitively expensive; it was such a bonanza for the Pennsylvania traders that the French became alarmed. They knew that Indian trade and diplomacy were closely linked, and Croghan's activities threatened French influence among the regional natives. The trader established his first headquarters in the Ohio County at a Seneca village on the Cuyahoga River, the site of present-day Cleveland, Ohio. (Together with the Mohawk, the Seneca were among the Six Nations of the Iroquois League.) As Croghan expanded his trading network westward toward Detroit, held by the French, they urged French-allied Indians to attack him.

In April 1745, the Seneca protected Croghan from capture, but elsewhere French-allied Natives robbed a canoe-load of Croghan's furs. In 1746 the Iroquois appointed Croghan to its Onondaga Council. This was an honor they had made to William Johnson a few years earlier and to the French fur trader Louis-Thomas Joncaire de Chabert (1670–1740) decades before that. Philippe-Thomas Joncaire, son of the earlier trader, was Croghan's and Johnson's principal French opponent in the Ohio region. By 1746 Johnson and the Six Nations had acquiesced to Croghan's dominant role in Ohio Country affairs.

Croghan is believed to have contributed to the outbreak of violence in the Ohio Country. In early 1747, five French traders were murdered by Seneca and Wyandot warriors at the Wyandot village of Sandusky on Lake Erie, beginning an Indian revolt against the French fomented by Croghan. The Wyandot Chief Nicholas Orontony led it first, followed by Memeskia (or "Old Briton" as Croghan named him), known by the French as La Demoiselle, who was a Piankeshaw Miami chief. Although unsuccessful in driving out the French, the participating bands moved closer to 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.

With the help of Mingo chiefs Tanacharison (Half King) and Scarouady, Croghan organized an Ohio Confederation of tribes. He brought the Miamis into an alliance with Great Britain, which was formalized in July 1748, at a treaty conference which he attended in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Andrew Montour, an interpreter, became Croghan's closest associate until his death in 1772. The other interpreter, Conrad Weiser, was Pennsylvania's Indian agent. He subsequently held an Indian conference at Logstown on the Ohio River at which Pennsylvania acknowledged the independence of the Ohio Confederation. Weiser later appointed Croghan to negotiate with the region's Indians.

At the 1748 Logstown conference, Weiser told the recently allied tribes that Britain had signed a peace treaty with France. As a result, he had no war supplies for them and distributed presents instead. Rumor of Celeron de Bienville's 1749 expedition to claim the Ohio Valley for France and to drive out the English traders prompted Governor James Hamilton (Pennsylvania) to dispatch Croghan to Logstown to investigate. Days before Celeron reached Logstown, its Mingo chiefs sold Croghan 200,000 acres (810 km2), excluding 2 square miles (5.2 km2) at the Forks of the Ohio for a British fort. His biographer Wainwright notes this was "a momentous event in his life."

The Virginia's Ohio Company agents Col. Thomas Cresap and Hugh Parker made overtures to the Indians at Pickawillany, which Croghan opposed in November 1749. A year later he and Montour began aiding Virginia by guiding its scout Christopher Gist on a tour of Ohio Indian villages. Croghan's 200,000 acres (810 km2) in unconfirmed Indian deeds motivated his shift in allegiance. Sometime in 1750 he realized that such large grants were against Pennsylvania statutes, but permitted in Virginia. Having alerted Governor Hamilton to the Mingo plea for a fort at the Forks of the Ohio, then backtracking, Croghan reversed himself another time. During a conference at the end of May 1751, he formally recorded the Mingo chiefs' request for the fort, but when Andrew Montour was called before the Pennsylvania Assembly for confirmation, he denied it. Taking no action, Pennsylvania effectively "defaulted its leadership in the West to Virginia's Ohio Company."

In the June 1752 conference at Logstown, Croghan was on the Indian Council and Andrew Montour acted as translator. The Mingo gave the Virginia's Ohio Company permission to build its fort and settle one hundred families on 500,000 acres (2,000 km2) in today's Western Pennsylvania. At the same time, Pickawillany was attacked by a French force led by Charles Langlade; they killed Old Britain and their soldiers boiled and ate him.

For Croghan, "the year 1753 was far worse, for it saw the virtual end of the Indian trade due to warfare. Early in the spring, Canada's Governor Duquesne, opened his campaign to drive the English out of the Ohio Valley." In October 1753, Scarouady officially appointed Croghan as leader of the Ohio Confederation during a conference held at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Croghan represented the Confederation in communications to and from Pennsylvania, and received its presents for the tribes. By the time that the 21-year-old George Washington made his diplomatic journey to the French at Fort Le Boeuf, Croghan had already spent more than a decade in the Ohio Country. For most of that time, he had been the pivotal figure among its traders, Indians, and colonial agents.