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John Montour: Life of a Cultural Go-Between (continued) †
For whatever reason Montour chose to live with the Wyandot, he was playing a dangerous game. It seems that he was forced to prove his commitment to the Wyandot by participating in their siege of Fort Laurens. In late January 1779, John Heckewelder informed Colonel John Gibson, the commander at Fort Laurens, that he had heard that when Montour received Dodge’s letter telling him he would be welcome at Pittsburgh, Montour remarked that it arrived too late, for if he were to back out of what had been agreed to it would have cost him his life. Montour himself wrote that he could not have gone to Pittsburgh in the winter of 1779 because “the Mingoes were against me.” In May 1779, well after the siege of Fort Laurens ended, the Delaware chiefs pointedly informed Colonel George Morgan that the fort had been besieged by 180 Indians, mainly Wyandot, Mingo, Muncee, and only four Delaware, whom they identified as the three Montour brothers and a nephew of Captain Pipe.26
The Wyandot called off the siege of Fort Laurens in March soon after news of George Rogers Clark’s capture of Lieutenant Governor Hamilton reached the Muskingum River area. At home in their villages, the Wyandot began to assess their situation. The Americans had finally shown some military strength and the British were not the all-powerful protectors they professed to be. It was during these reconsiderations that Montour’s long connection with the Wyandot began to bear fruit. In lat March 1779, Montour accompanied the Wyandot to Detroit where he helped them deliver a message to the new British commander. The Wyandot told him that unless the British provided them the strong assistance promised, they would not continue to fight the Americans. In early May, Montour carried letters and speeches as well as three peace belts from the Americans to the Wyandot. On May 28, 1779, he arrived at Coshocton with the news that the Wyandot were willing to make peace with the Americans. Montour’s activities among the Wyandot had not gone unnoticed by the British. When he departed for Coshocton, soldiers were sent out to capture him, but gave up after tracking him for nine days without success.27
Although the Wyandot did not actually travel to Fort Pitt until September—a delay that called their sincerity into question—the new military commander at Fort Pitt, Colonel Daniel Brodhead, did not hold the delay against John Montour. In June he told John Heckewelder that he trusted Montour’s “fidelity.” Because of that trust, Brodhead began to use Montour more aggressively in the American cause. In late June 1779, Brodhead learned that tory Simon Girty and seven Mingoes had passed through Coshocton on their way to raid nearby Holiday Cove on the east side of the Ohio River. Brodhead dispatched a party of men under Captain Brady and John Montour to intercept Girty. Unfortunately for the Americans, Girty was able to elude his pursuers. Although the Wyandot had agreed to a nominal peace, the Mingoes had not. They and some Munsies (a group closely affiliated with the Delaware) continued their raids against the frontier settlers. To punish them, Colonel Brodhead decided to strike at the Mingo villages along the upper Allegheny River and recruited Montour to guide the September 1779 campaign.28
By 1780, the good effects of Clark’s victory at Vincennes began to wear off. The inability of the Americans to adequately supply the Ohio country Indians strengthened the British position. There were, after all, trade goods at Detroit. Throughout 1780, the Wyandot began to renew their ties with the British. The situation among the Delaware was also growing tense. When Captain Pipe relocated his followers to the upper Sandusky region early in 1779, they provided the center around which the anti-American faction could form. During 1780, this growing faction was increasingly vocal. The Delaware who wished to stay neutral lost a strong proponent of peace when White Eyes died in the fall of 1779. Had the authorities at Fort Pitt not covered up the fact that he had been murdered, the neutralists would have been quickly undone. As it was, leadership of the peace faction fell to John Killbuck, chief of the Turtle clan. Although his position made him first among the chiefs, his authority was not strong. This was caused, in part, by the war, which increased the influence of the war chiefs. But Killbuck’s continued reliance on the Americans also made him look weak because it was becoming obvious to Indians and whites alike just how weak the American forces were.29
Killbuck’s loss of influence had begun in the spring of 1779 when, bowing to the hectoring of Colonel Brodhead, he agreed to allow individual Delaware to fight with the Americans against other Indians. Montour undoubtedly approved of the new policy because he took advantage of it. What Killbuck permitted, however, broke with a long, unwritten understanding that Ohio country Indians would not attack each other at the behest of the French, British, or Americans.30 Many Delaware were uncomfortable with this new policy and their discontent festered. In December 1780, Killbuck and those still loyal to him on the council at Coshocton took an even more drastic step: They openly sided with the Americans and declared war on the Mingo. Montour, now very much on the side of Killbuck, was chosen to lead the attack, but he did not aim solely at the Mingo. On December 7, 1780, Colonel Brodhead wrote, “Captain Montour is now in pursuit of another party of Indians … supposed to be either Tory Delaware or Muncies.”31 Delaware were now fighting Delaware.
If Killbuck had hoped his declaration would silence his critics, he badly misjudged their reaction, which rapidly undercut what little authority he had left. His impotence can be seen in the Henry Bawbee affair.32 In the fall of 1780, Bawbee, a Wyandot, arrived at Coshocton claiming to have valuable information he wanted to give to the Americans. Because of his long association with the Wyandot, Montour knew that Bawbee was no friend and was, in fact, a spy. After Montour unmasked him, Killbuck had Bawbee delivered to Colonel Brodhead at Fort Pitt. There he was jailed to await trial for espionage. But in January 1781, Bawbee escaped. He returned to Coshocton where he openly damned Killbuck and Montour with “the most horrid threats.” Brodhead was irritated that Killbuck did not have Bawbee retaken and returned to Fort Pitt. But Heckewelder replied that Killbuck could not have laid hold of Bawbee; in fact, had he so much as touched Bawbee, Killbuck would have been killed.33
In January 1781, Killbuck was forced to step down as chief of the Turtle clan. His absence from the Coshocton council gave Captain Pipe the opportunity to persuade the Coshocton Delaware to join the British against the Americans. Word reached Fort Pitt by March 4 that the Delaware were at war and that three war parties were ready to move against western settlements. John Montour, the bearer of this information, told Brodhead that he had been pursued by eight warriors and just barely avoided capture. Montour remained at Fort Pitt, while Killbuck took refuge with the Moravians.34
Colonel Brodhead decided to go on the offensive immediately. On April 7, 1781, he set off from Fort Pitt with 150 continental soldiers. Montour and four other loyal Delaware went with them. At Wheeling, Brodhead was joined by 150 militiamen. With Montour as his pilot, Brodhead marched his army toward Coshocton, where he took the town with little difficulty, capturing fifteen Delaware warriors and upwards of twenty old men, women, and children. When the warriors could not prove their loyalty to America, Brodhead had them executed. The village of Coshocton was put to the torch.35
Upon learning that Brodhead had taken and burned Coshocton, Killbuck left the Moravians and joined the Americans. On the way, he encountered a group of Delaware returning from a raid. In the resulting skirmish, Killbuck killed one of the raiders and brought the scalp to Brodhead. Homeless and facing the certain knowledge that the warring Delaware would seek revenge, Montour had little choice but to join Killbuck and thirty loyal Delaware who sought asylum at Pittsburgh. For the time being, Montour had burned all his bridges to the Ohio country Indians.36
Montour, a captain since 1779, continued his military service after his return to Fort Pitt. His duties for the rest of 1781 and the winter of 1782 are not known. There was probably little for him to do. The continental forces at Fort Pitt were too weak to mount any full-scale campaigns; routine patrolling was probably the extent of his service. However, on April 13, 1782, Captain John Montour and five other soldiers addressed a petition to Brigadier General William Irvine that indicated they had been in a recent fight with the Indians during which several brother soldiers had been killed. They specifically requested permission to seek revenge on the “savages” who had caused them harm. General Irvine, unlike Fort Pitt’s former commander, Colonel Brodhead, distrusted Montour because he had once been in the British service. In addition, Irvine found Montour far too cunning and went so far as to conclude it had been “very ill-judged to give such a fellow a commission.” Rather than granting Montour permission to take revenge, Irvine, on April 16, ordered him to wait on the secretary of war in Philadelphia. Irvine recommended that Montour be sent to New York to serve with the Oneida. Irvine’s principal worry was that Montour’s superior knowledge of the upper Ohio country would make him extremely dangerous if he returned to the British. It would be safer if Montour were stationed in unfamiliar territory.37
Irvine had good reason to suspect that Montour would switch sides. On March 7, 1782, Pennsylvania militiamen murdered more than ninety Delaware Indians at the village of Gnadenhutten on the Tuscarawas River in the Ohio country. Eighty-eight were Moravians, and more than half of those were women and children. The Delaware were outraged. Even those who held little respect for Christianity, such as Captain Pipe, swore they would seek revenge. News of the massacre spread rapidly. There can be little doubt that Montour had heard what happened at Gnadenhutten by April 13, 1782. Furthermore, because of his earlier close association with the Moravian missionaries and their Delaware congregations, he too would have been angry with their killers.38
Irvine also had reason to suspect that Montour may have wanted revenge not against the “savages” as he requested but on the frontier settlers. Colonel David Williamson, who commanded the militia that killed the Moravian Delaware, had led an earlier expedition against the Moravian villages in the fall of 1781. When he arrived at them, he found that nearly all the Moravian Delaware had abandoned their towns. Williamson made prisoners of the few Indians who remained and jailed them at Fort Pitt. Because they had committed no crime, they were soon released. Frontier lore records that one family was killed soon after its release. The family was that of a “Mr. Montour,” probably a kinsman of John.39
Irvine’s fears were realized. Montour did not travel to Philadelphia as ordered. Instead, he went to the lower Sandusky villages where, on April 24, 1782, he gave the Moravians more details of the Gnadenhutten massacre. In November 1782, John Montour and his brother brought four scalps and three young female prisoners to the British at Fort Niagara. Montour’s victims had lived in the Susquehanna River Valley northeast of the old Indian town of Shamokin. He stated that he had taken revenge upon Pennsylvania settlers because five of his brothers had been killed during the war. For the second time within a year Montour had severed ties with a group with which he had earlier cast his lot.40
After 1782, John Montour’s name dropped out of the public record. Indian agents and the military establishment in the 1780s make no mention of him. There is also no clear evidence of where he may have lived. He may have returned to Montour’s Island, but the island was no longer his. In 1783, the Pennsylvania Assembly granted preemptive rights to the island to Brigadier General William Irvine. Furthermore, given the frontiersmen’s deep hatred of all Indians, especially those who had killed white settlers, living close to Pittsburgh would have been extremely dangerous for a renegade like John Montour. He may have lived among the Miami Indians in the Indiana territory. The Piankashaw, a group affiliated with the Miami, invited Delaware Indians displaced by the Revolution to live on their land along the White River. Montour may have accepted their offer, or he may have sought refuge with relatives. His great-aunt had lived with the Miami early in the century, and, in 1785, a Piankashaw chief named Montour attended a council held at Louisville, Kentucky.
In any event, John Heckewelder provides closure on this period in Montour’s life. On a trip to visit the old Moravian settlements on the Muskingum, Heckewelder learned that two people he had known well had died. One was a Pittsburgh printer, who had hanged himself. The other was John Montour, who had been murdered by some Mingoes while he was out hunting in the winter of 1788. It was not inevitable that Montour would die at the hands of Mingoes, but it is not surprising. John Montour had made enemies.41
What are we to make of the strange wartime career of John Montour? Pro-British, anti-American; pro-American, anti-British; friendly with the anti-American Wyandot and anti-American Delaware Wolf clan; loyal to the discredited John Killbuck; a captain in the American army; a vengeful raider on the Pennsylvania frontier. The nature of the Revolutionary War in the Ohio country provides some explanations. Very quickly prewar alliances among the Indians and between the Indians and colonists collapsed. The war became what historian Richard White has labeled a contest between villages, both Indian and white.42 Under the constant pressure to choose sides, even villages fragmented into competing factions. In this world of raids and counter raids and persistent apprehension, neutrality—the ability or desire to walk the middle course—was foreclosed.43 Yet such a space was essential for a cultural go-between. As the war progressed, John Montour’s room to maneuver between Indian and Americans disappeared.
In the chaos of war, where a wide range of options are eliminated, older core values assert themselves and influence how one acts in a confusing situation. Despite Andrew Montour’s hope that his son would continue his dream and be at home in both the Indian and white worlds, it was not to be. John Montour remained at his cultural core an Indian. The telling point was when he sought permission to seek revenge. A soldier does not seek revenge, but a warrior does. Sensitivity to slights, reciprocal loyalty to friends, but most importantly, the demands imposed by kin and clan obligations, drove Montour’s actions. In a way, it was fitting that he died engaged in a winter hunt. It was a tradition that had defined Delaware men for generations.
26 Kellogg, ed., Frontier Advance, 222; “John Montour to John Dodge, Cooshackung, May 28, 1779,” ibid., 346; “Morgan to Jay, May 28, 1779,” ibid., 343.
27 Downes, Council Fires, 222-223, 238-240; MPHC, 10:328; “Gulle Monforton to Mr. Belanger Larnoult, Huron Village, May 7, 1779,” Ill. Hist. Colls., 1:435; “John Heckewelder to Col. Brodhad, Coochocking, May 28, 1779,” PA, 1 st ser., 7:516-518.
28 Kellogg, ed., Frontier Advance, 359; Consul Willshire Butterfield, History of the Girtys (1890; repr. Columbus, Ohio, 1950), 97-98; “The Recollections of Capt. Jesse Ellis,” in Louise Phelps Kellogg, ed., Frontier Retreat on the Upper Ohio, 1779-1781 ( Madison, Wis., 1917), 58; “Daniel Brodhead to Timothy Pickering, Sept. 16, 1779,” in Neville B. Craig, ed., The Olden Time: A Monthly Publication Devoted to the Preservation of Documents … (1848; repr. Cincinnati, Ohio, 1876), 2:309-311.
29 Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 36-39, 59-60; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 312-314; Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 78-83; Downes, Council Fires, 262-265.
30 Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 78.
32 It is possible that Henry Bawbee was the “son of the famous Bawbee,” that Dr. Thomas Walker placed at the Brafferton School in November 1775. He was back in the Ohio country in 1779 where he spread unfavorable reports about Virginians; John Heckewelder, Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Delaware … (1820; repr., New York, 1971), 206.
33 “John Heckewelder to Col. Daniel Brodhead, February 26, 1781,” in Kellogg, ed., Frontier Retreat, 337-338; “Brodhead to the Council at Cooshocking, Nov. 19, 1780,” ibid., 295; “Col. Brodhead to John Heckewelder, Jan. 21, 1781,” ibid., 321.
34 Kellogg, ed., Frontier Retreat, 339, 343.
35 “ Col. Daniel Brodhead to Pres. Reed, May 22, 1781,” PA, 1 st ser., 9:161-162; Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 82-83.
36 Weslager, Delaware Indians, 314-315; Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 82-83; “Brodhead to Reed, May 22, 1781,” PA, 1 st ser., 9:161-16. “A few days after the return of Brodhead from Coshocton, eighty hostile Delaware came up the Tuscarawas in search of Captain Killbuck and his band, breathing destruction to all of them,” C.W. Butterfield, “Narrative of Brodhead’s Coshocton Expedition,” in Kellogg, ed., Frontier Retreat, 380.
37 Jack M. Sosin, The Revolutionary Frontier, 1763-1783 (New York, 1967), 134-137; “To the most excellent James [William] Irvine, …” Butterfield, ed., Washington-Irvine Correspondence, 169; “ Irvine to Lincoln, Fort Pitt, April 30, 1782,” ibid., 168-169.
38 Heckewelder, Narrative, 309-328.
39 Alexander Withers, Chronicles of Border Warfare: or, A History of the Settlement by Whites of Northwestern Virginia (repr., 1895; new ed., 1970), 313, 318. If this was actually the family of John Montour, at last one child survived to visit the Moravians in the early nineteenth century. See “John Montour,” in Carl John Fliegel, comp., Index to the Records of the Moravian Mission among the Indians of North America, vol. 1 (New Haven, Conn., 1970).
40 Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 280, citing the Haldimand Papers, Addl. MSS, 21762:213. One of the captive women noted seeing a General Otter of Sunbury on the march with 200 militiamen. See also, the Pennsylvania Gazette, August 28, 1782, for a report from Sunbury, Pennsylvania, of a raid that took four scalps and three prisoners on the northeast branch of the Susquehanna in late July 1782.
41 Charles Hanna concludes that he did live on Montour’s Island during the 1780s. Charles A. Hanna, The Wilderness Trail (New York, 1911), 1:246, 200; Pennsylvania Gazette, October 1, 1783; “William Clark to the Indian Commissioners, Oct. 5, 1785,” Papers of the Continental Congress, M247, r69.156, p. 297; John Heckewelder, “A Short Account, …” in Paul A. W. Wallace, ed., Thirty Thousand Miles with John Heckewelder (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1958), 220, 222. On the hatred of frontiersmen toward Indians, see White, Middle Ground, 387-396.
43 Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 30-32, 36-39.
† This article was written by Kevin P. Kelly, historian in the Department of Historical Research, Colonial Williamsburg. The article first appeared in the Winter 2000/1 issue of the Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter.
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