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by Croghan, George; Morris, Thomas; Post, Christian Frederick; Weiser, Conrad
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Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #73714.
This volume assembles the surviving journals of four frontier figures, Conrad Weiser, George Croghan, Christian Frederick Post and Thomas Morris, who traversed the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes between 1748 and 1765. The editor’s introductory essay explains that the series was limited to “the century commencing with Conrad Weiser’s notable journey to the Western Indians in 1748,” and that each selection was judged on historical merit and rarity. The opening pages present Weiser’s 1748 expedition, the first official English embassy beyond the Alleghenies, followed by Croghan’s extensive accounts of trade, conflict, and his 1760‑61 Detroit trek with Rogers’s Rangers. Interspersed are Post’s 1758 missions to neutralize hostile tribes and Morris’s harrowing 1764 capture and escape near Detroit. The texts retain their original typographic quirks, with occasional bracketed corrections, offering a faithful reproduction of the period’s documentary style.
The prose is unmistakably eighteenth‑century, a blend of matter‑of‑fact travelogue and diplomatic report written by men who served as interpreters, traders and military officers. Their narratives are dense with place names, distances, and the logistics of river and overland travel, reflecting the practical concerns of frontier diplomacy rather than literary flourish. Readers who relish primary sources on early American westward expansion, scholars of colonial Indian relations, or anyone fascinated by the gritty details of frontier life will find these journals rewarding. The work appeals especially to historians, genealogists, and enthusiasts of early American geography who appreciate authentic, unembellished accounts of the Middle and Far West during the formative years of settlement.
The opening · free to read
In planning for this series of reprints of Early Western Travels, we were confronted by an embarrassment of riches. To reissue all of the many excellent works of travel originally published during the formative period of Western settlement, would obviously be impossible. A selection had therefore to be made, both as to period and material. The century commencing with Conrad Weiser’s notable journey to the Western Indians in 1748, set convenient limits to the field in the matter of time. The question of material was much more difficult.
It being unlikely that any two editors would choose the same volumes for reprint, criticism of our list will undoubtedly be made. It should, however, candidly be explained that the matter of selection has in each case necessarily been affected by two important considerations—(1) the intrinsic value of the original from the historical side, and (2) its present rarity and market value. The Editor having selected a list of items worthy of a new lease of life, the Publishers, from their intimate knowledge of the commercial aspect of rare Americana, advised which of these in their opinion were sufficiently in demand by libraries and collectors to render the enterprise financially productive. It is believed that this co-operative method has resulted in an interesting collection, and given point to the descriptive sub-title: “Some of the best and rarest contemporary volumes of travel ... in the Middle and Far West, during the period of early American settlement.”
The first volume of our series is necessarily more varied in composition than any of its successors, it having been deemed important to present herein several typical early tours into the Indian country west of the Alleghenies.
That of Conrad Weiser, occurring in August and September of 1748, was the first official journey undertaken at the instance of the English colonies, to the west of the mountain wall. His purpose was, to carry to the tribesmen on the Ohio a present from the Pennsylvania and Virginia authorities. The results were favorable to an English alliance, but they were partially neutralized by the French expedition headed by Céloron the following year.
The journals of George Croghan (1750-65) are an epitome of the Indian history of the time. The first three documents deal with the period of English progress—in 1750, Croghan was on the Ohio en route to the Shawnee towns and Pickawillany; the next season, he outwitted Joncaire on the Allegheny. The four succeeding documents are concerned with the period of hostility to the English—in 1754 he was on the Ohio after Washington had passed (December, 1753); the letter from Aughwick, in 1755, tells of affairs after Braddock’s defeat; in 1756, we learn particulars of Indian affairs; and in 1757 is given a résumé of past events. The last two journals are the longest and most important—that of 1760-61 is concerned, topographically and otherwise, with the trip to Detroit via Lake Erie, in the company of Rogers’s Rangers, and the return by land to Pittsburg; that of 1765, with a tour down the Ohio towards the Illinois, where the writer is captured and carried to Ouiatanon—in due course making a peace with Pontiac, and returning to Niagara.
The journals of Christian Frederick Post and Thomas Morris are interludes, as to time, in the Croghan diaries. Post’s two journals cover the months of July to September, 1758, and October, 1758 to January, 1759. He was at first sent out, by the northern trail, in midsummer, as an official messenger to the hostiles, among whom he succeeded in securing a kind of neutrality—a venturesome expedition into the neighborhood of Fort Duquesne, whose French commandant offered a price upon his head. The second journey, in the autumn, was undertaken to carry the news of the treaty of Easton (October, 1758), and pave the way for General Forbes’s advance. In the course of his journey he proceeded to the Indian towns on the Ohio and its northern tributaries, and returned to the settlements with Forbes’s army.
Captain Morris accompanied Bradstreet (1764) on the latter’s expedition towards Detroit. Being dispatched from Cedar Point on a mission to the French in the Illinois, Morris was arrested and maltreated at the Ottawa village at Maumee Rapids. He saw Pontiac, went to Fort Miami, narrowly escaped being burned at the stake, and finally made his escape through the woods to Detroit. His journal presents a thrilling episode in Western history.
It is our purpose, in these reprints, accurately to republish the original volumes, with all of their illustrations and other features. While seeking to reproduce the old text as closely as practicable, with its typographic and orthographic peculiarities, it has been found advisable here and there to make a few minor changes; these consist almost wholly of palpable blemishes, the result of negligent proof-reading—such as turned letters, transposed letters, slipped letters, and mis-spacings. Such corrections will be made without specific mention; in some instances, however, the original error has for a reason been retained, and in juxtaposition the correction given within brackets. We indicate, throughout, the pagination of the old edition which we are reprinting, by inclosing within brackets the number of each page at its beginning, e. g. [24]; in the few instances where pages were, as the fruit of carelessness in make-up, misnumbered in the original, we have given the incorrect as well as the correct figure, e. g. [25, i. e. 125]. In two or three instances, where matter foreign to our purpose was introduced in the volume as originally published—such as the journal of a voyage not within our field, or an appendix of irrelevant or unimportant matter—we have taken the liberty of eliminating this; in such cases, however, especial attention will be called to the omission.
An analytical index to the series will appear in the concluding volume.
In the preparation of notes for the present volume, the Editor has been assisted by Louise Phelps Kellogg, Ph.D., of the Division of Maps and Manuscripts in the Wisconsin State Historical Library. He has also been favored with valuable information on various points, from Colonel Reuben T. Durrett of Louisville, Mr. Frank H. Severance of Buffalo, the Western Reserve Historical Society at Cleveland, and Dr. Ernest C. Richardson and Dr. John Rogers Williams of Princeton University.
R. G. T.
MADISON, WIS., January, 1904.
SOURCE: Pennsylvania Colonial Records, v, pp. 348-358; with variations from Pennsylvania Historical Collections, i, pp. 23-33.
Conrad Weiser, one of the most prominent agents in the management of Indian affairs during the later French wars, was a native of Würtemberg, being born November 2, 1696. When Conrad was but fourteen years old, his father, John Conrad Weiser, led a party of Palatines to America where they lived four years on the Livingston manor in New York, and in 1714 removed to Schoharie. There young Weiser came in close contact with the Mohawk Indians, was adopted into their tribe, and living among them for some years became master of their language.
In 1729, he and his family, consisting of a wife and five young children, removed to Berks (then Lancaster) County, Pennsylvania, where a number of Weiser’s countrymen had preceded them. The new homestead was a mile east of the present town of Womelsdorf, and became the centre of an extended hospitality both for Pennsylvania Germans and visiting Indians. When Reading was laid out (1748), Weiser was one of the commissioners for that purpose, building therein a house and store that are still standing.
His first employment as an interpreter was in 1731, when forty shillings were allotted him for his services. From this time forward he was official interpreter for Pennsylvania, and for thirty years was employed in every important Indian transaction. The Pennsylvania Council testified in 1736 “that they had found Conrad faithfull and honest, that he is a true good Man & had Spoke their words [the Indians’] & our Words, and not his own.”[1] Again in 1743, the governor of Virginia requested the province of Pennsylvania to send their “honest interpreter,” Conrad Weiser, to adjust a difficulty with the Iroquois Indians; whereupon he proceeded to Onondaga with a present of £100 on the part of Virginia, and made peace for the English colonists.[2] The following year, Weiser was chief interpreter at the important treaty of Lancaster; and throughout King George’s War was occupied with negotiations with the Six Nations, detaching them from the French influence, and keeping the Pennsylvania Delawares quiet “upon their mats.”
After the journey to the Ohio, described in the following diary, Weiser’s Indian transactions were largely confined to the province of Pennsylvania; Montour and Croghan taking over the business with the Ohio Indians until the outbreak of the French and Indian War. Weiser now assumed duties in a military capacity. He raised a company of soldiers for the Canadian expedition (1755), and later was made lieutenant-colonel, with the care of the frontier forts under his charge. At the same time the New York authorities besought his influence with the Mohawks and Western Iroquois; and he assisted in arranging the treaty at Easton, which prepared the way for the success of Forbes’s expedition (1758).
Weiser was the most influential German of his section, possibly of all Pennsylvania; but his religious affiliations and enmities interfered with his political ambitions. Originally a Lutheran, in 1735 he became concerned with the movement of the Seventh Day Baptists, which led to the establishment of the community at Ephrata, where he was known as Brother Enoch, and consecrated to the priesthood. These sectaries charged that the bribe of official position tempted him to forsake his vows; certain it is that in 1741 he was appointed justice of the peace for Berks County, and left Ephrata, later (1743) sending a letter requesting his former brethren to consider him a “stranger.” The opposition of this sect of Germans, the indifference of the Moravians, and the alienation of his earlier Lutheran friends, lost him his coveted election for the assembly; and he afterwards withdrew from politics to remain the trusted adviser of the government upon Indian and local affairs. His sincerity, honesty, and trustworthiness made him greatly respected throughout the entire province, and his death, July 13, 1760, was considered a public calamity.
The journey undertaken to the Ohio, which the accompanying journal chronicles, was the first official embassy to the Indians who lived beyond the Alleghenies, and was undertaken for the following reasons.
The efforts of the English traders to push their connections among the “far Indians” had been increasingly successful, during the decade 1738-48, and the resulting rivalry with the French had reached an intense stage. The firm hold of the latter on the Indian nations of the “upper country” had been shaken by a long series of wars with the Foxes and Chickasaws, accompanied by humiliating defeats. In 1747, the most faithful of the French Indians—those domiciled at Mackinac and Detroit—had risen in revolt; and George Croghan sent word to the council at Philadelphia that some nations along the shore of Lake Erie desired the English alliance, having as an earnest thereof sent a belt of wampum and a French scalp.[3] The Pennsylvania authorities voted them a present of £200, to be sent out by Croghan. About the same time, a deputation of ten Indians from the Ohio arriving in Philadelphia, the council considered this “an extraordinary event in the English favor,” and not only secured a grant of £1,000 from the assembly, but applied to the governors of the Southern provinces to aid in this work; in accordance with which request, Virginia replied with an appropriation of £200.[4] Croghan set off in the spring of 1748, and informed the Allegheny Indians that Weiser, the official interpreter, would be among them during the summer. Meanwhile, the latter was detained by a treaty with the Twigtwee (Miami) Indians, who had come unexpectedly offering to the English the alliance of that powerful nation;[5] so that it was not until August that he was able to start on his mission to the Ohio.
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