Samuel Wharton - Ohio Valley Trade

Ohio Valley Trade

In 1768 Wharton attended the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. There Wharton represented a group of merchants, known as the "suffering traders", who had had trade goods destroyed during the French and Indian War and Pontiac's Rebellion (Marshall 1965:717). As compensation for their losses, the Iroquois granted the "suffering traders" a tract of land making up about a fourth of modern West Virginia. This land, known as Indiana—unrelated to the later state of the same name-would cause him nothing but trouble for the next twenty years.