250 years ago this week, Delaware and Iroquois chiefs met with Arthur St. Clair and George Croghan at Croghan’s home in western Pennsylvania. Croghan, an Irish immigrant to America, was an adopted member of the Iroquois and was married to Takarihoga (known in English as Catherine) the head of the Turtle clan of the Mohawk. Croghan had been working diligently for the last 30 years to maintain peace with Indians on the American frontier. St. Clair, an immigrant to America from Scotland, conveyed a letter from Royal Governor Penn of Pennsylvania apologizing that “some of our foolish young men” and the Virginians had murdered innocent Indians near Fort Pitt, and thanking the Native Americans for maintaining peace with Pennsylvania. Although Governor Dunmore of Virginia had declared war on the Shawnee and Mingos after they attacked Virginia settlers in retaliation for these murders, St. Clair’s mission was to ask the Delawares and Iroquois to intervene with the Shawnee and persuade them to “make up their differences with the Virginians” instead of going to war. Konieschquanoheel (called by the colonists Captain Pipe), a Delaware chief, agreed to carry the message from Pennsylvania to the Shawnee towns in Ohio urging them to “forgive what is past and offer to make peace” and pledging that the Governor of Pennsylvania would try to persuade his counterpart in Virginia to “join in mending the chain of friendship” that had been broken.

Governors Penn and Dunmore remained loyal to the Crown when the Revolutionary War began, but St. Clair and Croghan would join the Patriot cause. St. Clair would rise to the rank of Major General in the Continental Army. Croghan would continue his role as a peacemaker with the Indians on behalf of Pennsylvania and Virginia and the United States but was mistrusted by the Patriot government of Pennsylvania because of his close ties to the Mohawk, Seneca and other Iroquois tribes that sided with the British. He would die in obscurity shortly after the end of the War.

The Shawnee would side with the British during the War, but the efforts of Croghan and St. Clair to keep peace were successful in keeping most of the Delaware friendly with the Americans during the Revoluutionary War.

Sources: Williams, Glenn F., Dunmore’s War at pp. 213-216,; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Croghan