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CHAPTER prohibitory law. This effort failed as before. MeanIII. while, however, in 1791, South Carolina repealed her

1790. law upon the subject.

In spite of the unrepealed act of Massachusetts, a small theater was built in Boston, which was opened in 1792 as the "New Exhibition Room." To the Legislature which met shortly after, Governor Hancock complained that a number of aliens and foreigners had lately entered the state, and in the metropolis of the government, under advertisements insulting to the habits and education of the citizens, had been pleased to invite them to, and to exhibit before such as attended, stage plays, interludes, and theatrical entertainments, under the style and appellation of moral lectures." All which, as he complained, had been suffered to go on without any steps taken to punish "a most open breach of the laws and a most contemptuous insult to the powers of government." Shortly after this denunciation by the governor, suddenly one night, in the midst of the performance of the School for Scandal, the sheriff of the county appeared on the stage, arrested the actors, and broke up the performances. When the examination came on, having procured able counsel, the actors were discharged on the ground that the arrest was illegal, the warrant not having been sworn to. This defect was soon remedied, and a second arrest brought the performances to a close. But the Legislature, finding the sentiment of the town of Boston strong against the law, and that a new and permanent theater was in the course of erection, repealed the act a few months after. This was in 1793, the desire to tell this whole story at once having carried us nearly three years beyond the period to which the present chapter more particularly relates.

Not discouraged by the ill success of his first attempt

III.

to negotiate with the Creeks, Washington had dispatched CHAPTER Colonel Willett on a new mission to that confederacy. Willett had persuaded the chief, M'Gillivray, to proceed 1790. to New York, where the negotiation might be carried on with less liability to interruption, or influence from local interests or wishes. Accompanied by twenty-eight principal chiefs and warriors of his nation, McGillivray was very cordially and ceremoniously received both at Philadelphia, as he passed through it, and in New York, where he arrived while Congress was still in session. In his June 23. reception at New York, a leading part was taken by the Tammany Society, or Columbian Order, an association then recently instituted, afterward famous from its connection with politics, over which it still claims to exercise a certain influence. Professing to be a national society, "founded on the true principles of patriotism, and having for its motives charity and brotherly love," its pageantry exhibited a strange jumble of European and Indian ideas. The ideal patrons of the society were Columbus and Tammany, the last a legendary Indian chief, once lord, it was said, of the island of Manhattan, and now adopted as the patron saint of America. The association was divided into thirteen tribes, each tribe typifying a state, presided over by a sachem. There were also the honorary posts of warrior and hunter, and the council of the sachems had at their head a grand sachem, a type evidently of the President of the United States. Arrayed in their Indian dresses, this society escorted McGillivray and his Creeks into the city, and afterward entertained them at a public dinner. As being the son of a Scotsman, M'Gillivray was also chosen an honorary member of the St. Andrew's Society. Having first obtained the advice and consent of the Senate as to the terms of an arrangement, Washington appointed Knox

CHAPTER as commissioner to negotiate with the Creeks; and a

III. treaty having been concluded, it was solemnly ratified 1790. the day after the adjournment of Congress. The presiAug. 13. dent, with his suite, met the Creek chiefs in the hall of the House of Representatives, in presence of a large assembly. The treaty having been first read and interpreted, Washington addressed the Indians, who gave to each paragraph of his speech, as it was interpreted to them, an audible and emphatic assent. Having signed the treaty, he presented a string of wampum as a memorial of the peace, and a paper of tobacco to smoke in commemoration of it a substitute, it would seem, for the old Indian custom of actually smoking the calumet. On receiving these tokens, M'Gillivray made a short reply, to which followed the "shake of peace," a shaking of hands interchanged between Washington and each of the chiefs. The ceremony was then concluded by a "song of peace," in which all the chiefs joined.

Mutual concessions were made by this treaty. All the territory south and west of the Oconee, including the tract recently claimed and partly occupied by the Geor gians, was solemnly guaranteed to the Creeks, they resigning all pretensions to any lands north and east of that river, and acknowledging themselves to be under the sole protection of the United States. There was to be a mutual exchange of prisoners, and all Creeks hereafter committing murder or robbery upon any white inhabitant were to be given up for punishment, the Creeks, however, reserving the right to punish at their discretion any white men intruding on their lands. As an inducement to the Indians to come into this arrangement, and to secure their fidelity, it was provided by a secret article that presents to the value of $1500 should annually be distributed among the nation. Annuities of one hundred

III.

dollars were also secured to six of the principal chiefs, and CHAPTER to M Gillivray $1200 annually, in the name of salary as agent of the United States. He was also to enjoy the 1790. privilege of importing goods for supplying the Indians duty free.

The giving up to the Indians of the lands south and west of the Oconee occasioned great dissatisfaction in Georgia. An association was formed among some of the more violent for settling those lands in spite of the treaty; but this bravado does not seem to have been persisted in. The Legislature passed resolutions in which several articles of the treaty were severely criticised, preceded, however, by a declaration that the arrangement was legal and binding, and pledging the faith of the state to support it. Even among the Creeks themselves it met with some opposition, excited by one Bowles, a white man, a native of Maryland, formerly an Indian agent under the British authority, who arrived about this time from Bermuda, pretending British support, and seeking to set himself up as a sort of rival to McGillivray.

An attempt to arrange matters with the Western Indians was less successful. Encouraged by Sir John Johnson, the former British Indian agent, and by the British authorities in Canada, where Sir Guy Carleton, now Lord Dorchester, was again governor, the Western tribes insisted on re-establishing the Ohio as the Indian boundary, nor would they listen to any other terms. The hostile warriors infested the banks of that river, waylaying the boats in which emigrants descended; and they still continued their incursions into Kentucky, attacking the more remote stations, and committing many murders.

An attempt at retaliation had been made in the spring April. by a party of two hundred and thirty Kentucky volunteers, joined by a hundred regulars from Fort Washing

CHAPTER ton. They marched under Harmer to the Scioto, but III. found the Indian camp deserted, and returned without 1790. accomplishing any thing. A more formidable expedi

tion, consisting of three hundred and twenty regulars, joined by two quotas of militia, one from Pennsylvania, the other from Kentucky, amounting in the whole to eleven hundred men, called out by order of the presiOct. dent, marched in the autumn against the Miami village on the Scioto, where now stands the town of Chilicothe. On the approach of this force the Indians fled. The vil lage was burned, and the corn-fields ravaged. Colonel Hardin, detached in pursuit with a hundred and fifty of his Kentucky militia and thirty regulars under Captain Armstrong, fell into an ambush about six miles from the village. The militia took to flight at the first alarm, without hardly firing a gun, deserting the regulars, who stood firm till most of them were killed. The Indians remained on the field, and during the night held a dance of victory, exulting with frantic shouts and gestures over their dead and dying enemies, a ceremony of which Captain Armstrong was a constrained and wretched witness, being sunk to his neck in mud and water within a hundred yards of the scene. The Indians approached Harmer's camp, and some skirmishing ensued; but he moved off a day or two after, without attempting to bring them to action. Soon, however, he seems to have changed his mind; for on the second day's march, when about ten miles from his late camp, he called a halt, and sent Hardin back to the ruined town with some sixty regulars and three hundred militia. The Indians found there separated themselves into small parties, and, seeming to fly, drew off the militia in pursuit, when suddenly a band not hitherto seen rose from the grass and attacked the regulars with their tomahawks. Recalled from their vain pur

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