Fail to End Warfare Through Treaty at Albany, October 26, 1745

During the minority of Richard and Thomas Penn the Proprietary Land Office had been closed from 1718 to 1732, and many immigrants seated themselves without title on such vacant lands as suited their convenience.

The number of such immigrants entitled them to great consideration. Their rights accruing by priority of settlement were recognized by the public and passed, together with their improvements, through many hands, in confidence that they would receive proprietary sanction.

Much agitation was produced when the Provincial proclamation required all who had not obtained and paid for warrants to pay to the Receiver General, within four months, the sums due for their lands, under penalty of ejectment. As a consequence many and great difficulties arose. The Assembly sought to compromise the matter by postponement of payment of the purchase money for several years.

Great Britain and Spain declared war October 23, 1739, and the old troubles between the Governor and Assembly again appeared to disturb the peace of the Government. The Assembly refused to support England with money or troops and Governor Thomas was compelled to raise Pennsylvania’s quota of 400 men by his own exertion. This he accomplished in three months, but many of his recruits were bond-servants willing to exchange their service and freedom dues for nominal liberty and soldier’s pay.

In March, 1744, hostilities were openly declared between Great Britain and France. The peaceful era in the Province was now at an end, and the dark cloud of the cruel savage warfare began to gather on the western frontier.

The lands acquired by the infamous “Indian Walk,” and those of the Shawnee, which were purchased without their consent, were now to be paid for by the blood of the settlers.

The Delaware Indians refused to leave the forks of the Delaware, even though the “walk” had determined these lands belonged to the Proprietary. The Six Nations were called upon to order off the Delaware, which they did in an overbearing manner. The Delaware retired to Wyoming Valley and the forks of the Susquehanna, at Shamokin, with this additional wrong done them rankling in their breasts.

Franklin published his “Plain Truth” in an endeavor to conciliate the Assembly and the Governor and awaken them both to the importance of military preparations. Franklin was appointed a Colonel, but declined. He preferred to wield the pen, with which he could be of far 748greater influence to the province. James Logan justified defensive war and assisted with his means.

Defenses were erected below the City of Philadelphia from funds raised for the purpose by means of a public lottery, in which many Quakers sowed a seed, trusting it would bring forth an hundredfold.

These military preparations were necessary for two purposes: to intimidate a foreign enemy and to curb the hostile disposition of the Indians.

The alienation of the Indians was greatly to be dreaded, and Governor Thomas called Conrad Weiser, the provincial interpreter, to the service and dispatched him on a mission to Shikellamy the great vicegerent at Shamokin (now Sunbury), to renew the assurances of friendship and to propose his mediation between the Indians and the Government of Virginia, occasioned by an unpleasant encounter between some Onondaga and Oneida with the English while on an expedition against the Tallapoosa, resident of that colony.

Weiser was happily successful and a treaty was held the ensuing summer. The Indians refrained from hostility in the meantime.

The treaty was convened at Lancaster, June 22, 1744, and ended July 4 following. It was attended by Governor Thomas in person, and by commissioners of Maryland and Virginia.

All matters of dispute were satisfactorily settled, and the Iroquois engaged to prevent the French and their Indian allies from marching through their country to attack the English settlements.

This conference did not, however, remove causes for future disquiet, occasioned by the encroachments of the settlers and the unfair conduct of the Indian traders.

The Shawnee, on the Ohio, allied to the French interest, now assumed a hostile attitude. A great convention was held at Albany, October 26, 1745, to which commissioners from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Pennsylvania were sent.

The Six Nations were urged to take up the hatchet against the French and become parties in the war, but the Indians showed no disposition to enter the contest, and the result of the conference was far from being satisfactory.

In May, 1746, Governor Thomas was directed by the Crown to raise forces for a conquest of Canada. After much delay, the Assembly voted £5000, and Governor Thomas raised four companies of over one hundred men each, commanded by Captain William Trent, John Shannon, Samuel Perry and John Deimer, who marched at once to Albany.

The attempt on Canada was postponed, but the troops were retained nearly eighteen months along the Hudson to intimidate the Indians.

John Penn died, and at a meeting of the Assembly held May 5, 1747, Governor Thomas communicated the news of his death, and at the same time, on account of his own ill-health, he resigned his office.

749On the departure of Governor Thomas, the executive administration devolved upon the Council, of which Anthony Palmer was president, until the arrival of James Hamilton, son of Andrew Hamilton, former Speaker of the Assembly, as Lieutenant Governor, November 23, 1749.

The crops were abundant in 1751 and 1752, but these years of plenty were followed by a season of want, covering the years 1753–1755, and on the heels of it came Indian hostilities.

The progress of the white population toward the west irritated the Indians. Especially was this true of the Scotch-Irish, who seated themselves on the west of the Susquehanna, on the Juniata, and in the Great and Little Coves formed by the Kittatinny and the Tuscarora hills, and at the Big and Little Connolloways.

The French applied themselves to seduce the Indians from their allegiance to the English. The Shawnee had already joined them, the Delaware awaited an opportunity to avenge their wrongs, and of the Six Nations, the Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca were wavering.

To keep the Indians in favor of the Province required much cunning diplomacy and expensive presents. A chain of forts and the maintenance of a military force, drew heavily on the Provincial purse, and it is but little wonder that the Assembly and the Proprietaries early divided on questions involving taxes and expenditures. The French and Indian War soon broke in all its fierceness.