Interpretive Plan - Research Paper - Native Americans, James Logan, and Stenton by Scott Stephenson

SCOTT STEPHENSON

Independent Historian
July 2002

I. Introduction

The personal fortune that allowed James Logan to build Stenton and to fill it with fine furnishings was founded largely on profits from the expropriation of Native American land and the fruits of their labor. When Logan arrived in Philadelphia aboard the ship Canterbury in 1699, the Delaware Valley was home to an unknown number (perhaps several thousand) of Algonquian-speaking Native Americans who referred to themselves collectively as Lenni Lenape or "Original People". These largely autonomous, culturally related groups who would later be known as "Delaware" Indians had already experienced more than a century of contact with European explorers, traders, colonists, goods and diseases. For the next half century, Logan wielded considerable public and private influence to shape profoundly Pennsylvania’s relations with the Lenape and neighboring native peoples.

This period was long characterized by historians as a golden era of intercultural harmony set against a backdrop of European-Indian conflict in other colonies. Yet the familiar image of natives and newcomers gathered peacefully beneath the Shackamaxon Treaty Elm, a scene imaginatively painted by eighteenth-century Pennsylvania-born artist Benjamin West, conceals a disquieting transformation. In the time between James Logan's arrival and his death in 1751, Pennsylvania's non-native population increased five-fold (from about 21,000 to 108,000), while Indians were reduced to a nearly invisible remnant. By that time, the land itself had become almost unrecognizable to the Original People, most of whom had moved to settlements in the Susquehanna and Ohio Valleys. The devastating frontier conflict that followed closely on Logan's death, the so-called French and Indian War, revealed deep bitterness on the part of many of the dispossessed.

The challenge facing Stenton as a museum is to invite visitors to look beyond the "glorious" house and its remarkable furnishings in order to consider complex, often disquieting aspects of James Logan's career and legacy. At the same time, there is an opportunity to see Logan and his native counterparts as co-participants in a burgeoning transatlantic economy that shaped profoundly the material lives of each.

II. Historians, Native Americans, and James Logan

Pennsylvania history traditionally dwells on William Penn's seemingly anomalous commitment to treating Indians fairly, and on the long period of intercultural peace that ended with the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1755. Within this traditional framework, James Logan appears in a generally favorable – even laudatory – light, faithful to Penn's vision and the architect of the colony's "remarkably successful Indian policy." (Tolles, 1955:5) This view of Pennsylvania's eighteenth century Indian relations, and of James Logan, has shifted greatly in recent years.

Francis Jennings' pioneering work provides the most critical reexamination of Logan and colonial Pennsylvanians' relations with the Lenape, the Iroquois Confederacy, and other Native American groups. Building on claims made by Quakers as early as the 1750s, Jennings marshaled long-forgotten sources in a series of articles and books that illuminated what he considered to be a longstanding campaign by Logan and the Penn family to fraudulently dispossess the colony's native inhabitants and enrich themselves with the resulting profits from land sales. If other historians have been reluctant to embrace completely Jennings' conspiratorial views, other more nuanced readings of the historical record by scholars such as James Merrell, Daniel Richter, and Eric Hinderaker have left intact the senior scholar’s basic points. Recent review essays by Richter and Thomas J. Sugrue reinforce the point that even in the absence of military conflict, Pennsylvania’s native population was decimated and dispossessed in the process of colonial settlement. Far from willing parties to their own diaspora, many Lenape and other native people nursed resentments that led to the devastating frontier war of the 1750s. As the architect of the colony's Indian policy for the critical half century following William Penn's departure, Logan's responsibility for policies that brought disastrous consequences for Native Americans is broadly accepted. (Sugrue, 2, Richter, 248-9)

III. Recommendations

Stenton's fine artifacts and architecture that illuminate so many other aspects of James Logan's life do not at first glance seem to offer much insight into his relationship with Native Americans. Logan does not appear to have acquired and displayed any of the "savage curiosities" that during his lifetime were coming into fashion as display pieces in the homes of British and colonial elites. Moreover, James Merrell has observed that unlike William Penn, "Logan's prodigious curiosity and voluminous correspondence betray little interest in Indians beyond trade and diplomacy." (Merrell, 62-3)

Yet a revised interpretive program at Stenton need not focus exclusively on the deleterious effects of James Logan's actions on Native Americans. Recognizing that American Indians were not merely helpless victims in the face of European colonization, James Axtell has called on historians (and by extension, museums) to present “mutual histories of continuous interaction and influence." (Axtell, 223-4) Francis Jennings observed, for example, that Logan's cultivation of the Covenant Chain alliance with the Iroquois Confederacy allowed that group to expand its influence and authority over Pennsylvania's other native people. (Jennings, 1984: 263). Themes to emphasize and techniques to do so include:

Changes in the Land: Visitors currently approach Stenton on a path that follows a fence line from the parking lot to the house. This simple object—a wooden fence of early form— might be used to introduce visitors to the enormous changes in land use and landscape brought about by European colonization of the Delaware Valley. Having no domesticated animals aside from dogs, Lenape women did not traditionally fence their fields, leaving their crops vulnerable to imported farm animals, particularly pigs. Fundamental differences in native and colonial farming practices and husbandry made it difficult for such peoples to live in close proximity. This observation may help to explain to visitors how factors less dramatic than military conflict could nevertheless place enormous pressure on the region's native population to relocate. A small garden area might be developed to show the major food crops cultivated by Lenape women and to reinforce the idea that colonization created a new world for Indians and settlers alike.

Diplomacy: Stenton was the setting for a number of intercultural meetings and councils that brought on several occasions more than one hundred Native Americans to the grounds. As Pennsylvania's de facto superintendent of Indian affairs, James Logan developed considerable mastery of the complex protocol of "forest diplomacy". Incorporating Iroquoian, Algonquian, and European objects and ceremonies, councils between Pennsylvanians and Native Americans offer a rich area for interpretation. Records of the delegation of some 188 Iroquois and other Native Americans who spent several days at Stenton in 1742, for example, might suggest objects like printed treaty minutes, wampum belts or strings that could be reproduced and used to discuss this vital aspect of Logan's public career.

Trade and Consumption: James Logan was both an eager consumer and, as the province's most active promoter of the trade in Indian-produced skins and furs, a powerful agent in the incorporation of Pennsylvania's native people into the transatlantic economy. The fur and skin trade transformed many aspects of aboriginal life in North America, creating opportunities as well as challenges. Stenton's existing "Conestoga" wagon might be employed as an interpretive device that would help visitors to see links between eighteenth-century Pennsylvania Indians and Logan’s Stenton and its fine furnishings. Visitors may be expected to recognize the term Conestoga wagon, but most will associate it with white pioneers and overland travel in the Great Plains. Logan's wagons, however, carried manufactured goods that were exchanged for furs and skins gathered and processed by native people. Many examples of the textiles, pigments, glass, iron, and other objects dating from c.1710-1750 have been excavated at the site of the Conestoga Indian Town in Lancaster County, and are curated at the Pennsylvania State Museum. Most of these goods undoubtedly traveled on Logan's wagons and were traded from Logan's stores on the Susquehanna. A static exhibit in the barn could utilize photographs, reproductions or comparable antique items to explore the impact of manufactured goods on the material lives of Pennsylvania's native people.

IV. Further Research

Logan's public career and personal land and trade dealings have been studied extensively, although fresh insights are always possible. Less well known are the personal interactions that took place at Stenton between Logan or members of his household and the native people who visited during public councils. Historians like James Merrell have noted that Logan's correspondence is disappointing for those seeking insights into his interactions with and opinions on Native Americans beyond diplomacy and trade. The most promising sources for further research seem to his voluminous account books and other memoranda. Did Logan seek reimbursement for expenses incurred in hosting native delegations at Stenton? What insights do lists of expenditures provide about how such groups were accommodated, fed, and entertained? Were native leaders given access to the house, or were they entertained elsewhere? If such details have survived, they are most likely to be found in sources overlooked by most historians.

Accounts and inventories from Stenton and other Germantown households might shed unexpected light on less dramatic, everyday encounters with native people. There is considerable evidence that Indians who remained in the Delaware Valley after most of their kinsmen departed supported themselves with a variety of low-paying crafts and services, particularly the manufacture of baskets and brooms. (Becker, 1990, 1992; Custer, 1998) The presence of such objects might with caution be used to suggest the broad range of Native American experiences and reactions to Pennsylvania's settlement.

Another fruitful line of research might combine study of Logan's trade records with the Conestoga archaeological collection. Just as James Logan expressed culturally-conditioned taste and refinement through the display of British and other manufactured goods at Stenton, so too did his Conestoga customers and other native Pennsylvanians participate in the "consumer revolution" that touched peoples throughout the Atlantic World.

Bibliography

James Axtell, "Colonial America Without the Indians," in Axtell, After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America. (New York 1988) 222-243.

Marshall J. Becker, “Hannah Freeman: An Eighteenth-Century Lenape Living and Working Among Colonial Farmers,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 114: (1990) 249-269.

Marshall J. Becker, “Legends About Hannah Freeman (“Indian Hannah”): Squaring the Written Accounts with the Oral Tradition,” Keystone Folklore 4:2 (1992) 1-24.

Jay Custer, “Hannah Freeman’s Baskets,” Pennsylvania Archaeologist. 68 no.1 (1998) 34-46.

Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800. (New York and Cambridge, 1997).

Francis Jennings, “Incident at Tulpehocken,” Pennsylvania History, 35:4 (October 1968) 335-55.

Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies. (New York & London, 1984).

Francis Jennings, ‘The Delaware Interregnum,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 89:2 (April 1965) 174-98.

Barry C. Kent, Susquehanna’s Indians. (Harrisburg, PA, 1984).

James Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier. (New York & London, 1999)

Daniel K. Richter, ‘A Framework for Pennsylvania Indian History,” Pennsylvania History. 57 (1990) 236-261.

Timothy Shannon, “Dressing for Success on the Mohawk Frontier: Hendrick, William Johnson, and the Indians Fashion,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, LIII, No. 1 (January 1996) 13-42.

Ian K. Steele, “Exploding Colonial American History: Amerindian, Atlantic, and Global Perspectives,” Reviews in American History, 26 (1998) 70-95.

Thomas J. Sugrue, “The Peopling and Depeopling of Early Pennsylvania: Indians and Colonists, 1680-1720,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 116: 1 (January 1992) 1-29.

Frederick B. Tolles, James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America (Boston, 1957).

Alden T. Vaughan, general ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607-1789:(Washington, D.C., University Publications of America, 1979), Vol. I: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629-1737; Volume II: Pennsylvania Treaties, 1737-1756.

Anthony F. C. Wallace, King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung, 1700-1763. (Reprint, Salem, NH, 1970).

Anthony F. C. Wallace, “Women, Land, and Society: Three Aspects of Aboriginal Delaware Life,” Pennsylvania Archaeologist, 17:1-4 (1947) 1-35.

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	SCOTT STEPHENSON Independent Historian July 2002 *I. Introduction* The personal fortune that allowed James Logan to build Stenton and to fill it with fine furnishings was founded largely on profits from the expropriation of Native American land and the fruits of their labor. When Logan arrived in Philadelphia aboard the ship Canterbury in 1699, the Delaware Valley was home to an unknown number (perhaps several thousand) of Algonquian-speaking Native Americans who referred to themselves collectively as Lenni Lenape or "Original People". These largely autonomous, culturally related groups who would later be known as "Delaware" Indians had already experienced more than a century of contact with European explorers, traders, colonists, goods and diseases. For the next half century, Logan wielded considerable public and private influence to shape profoundly Pennsylvania’s relations with the Lenape and neighboring native peoples. This period was long characterized by historians as a golden era of intercultural harmony set against a backdrop of European-Indian conflict in other colonies. Yet the familiar image of natives and newcomers gathered peacefully beneath the Shackamaxon Treaty Elm, a scene imaginatively painted by eighteenth-century Pennsylvania-born artist Benjamin West, conceals a disquieting transformation. In the time between James Logan's arrival and his death in 1751, Pennsylvania's non-native population increased five-fold (from about 21,000 to 108,000), while Indians were reduced to a nearly invisible remnant. By that time, the land itself had become almost unrecognizable to the Original People, most of whom had moved to settlements in the Susquehanna and Ohio Valleys. The devastating frontier conflict that followed closely on Logan's death, the so-called French and Indian War, revealed deep bitterness on the part of many of the dispossessed. The challenge facing Stenton as a museum is to invite visitors to look beyond the "glorious" house and its remarkable furnishings in order to consider complex, often disquieting aspects of James Logan's career and legacy. At the same time, there is an opportunity to see Logan and his native counterparts as co-participants in a burgeoning transatlantic economy that shaped profoundly the material lives of each. *II. Historians, Native Americans, and James Logan* Pennsylvania history traditionally dwells on William Penn's seemingly anomalous commitment to treating Indians fairly, and on the long period of intercultural peace that ended with the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1755. Within this traditional framework, James Logan appears in a generally favorable – even laudatory – light, faithful to Penn's vision and the architect of the colony's "remarkably successful Indian policy." (Tolles, 1955:5) This view of Pennsylvania's eighteenth century Indian relations, and of James Logan, has shifted greatly in recent years. Francis Jennings' pioneering work provides the most critical reexamination of Logan and colonial Pennsylvanians' relations with the Lenape, the Iroquois Confederacy, and other Native American groups. Building on claims made by Quakers as early as the 1750s, Jennings marshaled long-forgotten sources in a series of articles and books that illuminated what he considered to be a longstanding campaign by Logan and the Penn family to fraudulently dispossess the colony's native inhabitants and enrich themselves with the resulting profits from land sales. If other historians have been reluctant to embrace completely Jennings' conspiratorial views, other more nuanced readings of the historical record by scholars such as James Merrell, Daniel Richter, and Eric Hinderaker have left intact the senior scholar’s basic points. Recent review essays by Richter and Thomas J. Sugrue reinforce the point that even in the absence of military conflict, Pennsylvania’s native population was decimated and dispossessed in the process of colonial settlement. Far from willing parties to their own diaspora, many Lenape and other native people nursed resentments that led to the devastating frontier war of the 1750s. As the architect of the colony's Indian policy for the critical half century following William Penn's departure, Logan's responsibility for policies that brought disastrous consequences for Native Americans is broadly accepted. (Sugrue, 2, Richter, 248-9) *III. Recommendations* Stenton's fine artifacts and architecture that illuminate so many other aspects of James Logan's life do not at first glance seem to offer much insight into his relationship with Native Americans. Logan does not appear to have acquired and displayed any of the "savage curiosities" that during his lifetime were coming into fashion as display pieces in the homes of British and colonial elites. Moreover, James Merrell has observed that unlike William Penn, "Logan's prodigious curiosity and voluminous correspondence betray little interest in Indians beyond trade and diplomacy." (Merrell, 62-3) Yet a revised interpretive program at Stenton need not focus exclusively on the deleterious effects of James Logan's actions on Native Americans. Recognizing that American Indians were not merely helpless victims in the face of European colonization, James Axtell has called on historians (and by extension, museums) to present “mutual histories of continuous interaction and influence." (Axtell, 223-4) Francis Jennings observed, for example, that Logan's cultivation of the Covenant Chain alliance with the Iroquois Confederacy allowed that group to expand its influence and authority over Pennsylvania's other native people. (Jennings, 1984: 263). Themes to emphasize and techniques to do so include: Changes in the Land: Visitors currently approach Stenton on a path that follows a fence line from the parking lot to the house. This simple object—a wooden fence of early form— might be used to introduce visitors to the enormous changes in land use and landscape brought about by European colonization of the Delaware Valley. Having no domesticated animals aside from dogs, Lenape women did not traditionally fence their fields, leaving their crops vulnerable to imported farm animals, particularly pigs. Fundamental differences in native and colonial farming practices and husbandry made it difficult for such peoples to live in close proximity. This observation may help to explain to visitors how factors less dramatic than military conflict could nevertheless place enormous pressure on the region's native population to relocate. A small garden area might be developed to show the major food crops cultivated by Lenape women and to reinforce the idea that colonization created a new world for Indians and settlers alike. Diplomacy: Stenton was the setting for a number of intercultural meetings and councils that brought on several occasions more than one hundred Native Americans to the grounds. As Pennsylvania's de facto superintendent of Indian affairs, James Logan developed considerable mastery of the complex protocol of "forest diplomacy". Incorporating Iroquoian, Algonquian, and European objects and ceremonies, councils between Pennsylvanians and Native Americans offer a rich area for interpretation. Records of the delegation of some 188 Iroquois and other Native Americans who spent several days at Stenton in 1742, for example, might suggest objects like printed treaty minutes, wampum belts or strings that could be reproduced and used to discuss this vital aspect of Logan's public career. Trade and Consumption: James Logan was both an eager consumer and, as the province's most active promoter of the trade in Indian-produced skins and furs, a powerful agent in the incorporation of Pennsylvania's native people into the transatlantic economy. The fur and skin trade transformed many aspects of aboriginal life in North America, creating opportunities as well as challenges. Stenton's existing "Conestoga" wagon might be employed as an interpretive device that would help visitors to see links between eighteenth-century Pennsylvania Indians and Logan’s Stenton and its fine furnishings. Visitors may be expected to recognize the term Conestoga wagon, but most will associate it with white pioneers and overland travel in the Great Plains. Logan's wagons, however, carried manufactured goods that were exchanged for furs and skins gathered and processed by native people. Many examples of the textiles, pigments, glass, iron, and other objects dating from c.1710-1750 have been excavated at the site of the Conestoga Indian Town in Lancaster County, and are curated at the Pennsylvania State Museum. Most of these goods undoubtedly traveled on Logan's wagons and were traded from Logan's stores on the Susquehanna. A static exhibit in the barn could utilize photographs, reproductions or comparable antique items to explore the impact of manufactured goods on the material lives of Pennsylvania's native people. *IV. Further Research* Logan's public career and personal land and trade dealings have been studied extensively, although fresh insights are always possible. Less well known are the personal interactions that took place at Stenton between Logan or members of his household and the native people who visited during public councils. Historians like James Merrell have noted that Logan's correspondence is disappointing for those seeking insights into his interactions with and opinions on Native Americans beyond diplomacy and trade. The most promising sources for further research seem to his voluminous account books and other memoranda. Did Logan seek reimbursement for expenses incurred in hosting native delegations at Stenton? What insights do lists of expenditures provide about how such groups were accommodated, fed, and entertained? Were native leaders given access to the house, or were they entertained elsewhere? If such details have survived, they are most likely to be found in sources overlooked by most historians. Accounts and inventories from Stenton and other Germantown households might shed unexpected light on less dramatic, everyday encounters with native people. There is considerable evidence that Indians who remained in the Delaware Valley after most of their kinsmen departed supported themselves with a variety of low-paying crafts and services, particularly the manufacture of baskets and brooms. (Becker, 1990, 1992; Custer, 1998) The presence of such objects might with caution be used to suggest the broad range of Native American experiences and reactions to Pennsylvania's settlement. Another fruitful line of research might combine study of Logan's trade records with the Conestoga archaeological collection. Just as James Logan expressed culturally-conditioned taste and refinement through the display of British and other manufactured goods at Stenton, so too did his Conestoga customers and other native Pennsylvanians participate in the "consumer revolution" that touched peoples throughout the Atlantic World. Bibliography James Axtell, "Colonial America Without the Indians," in Axtell, After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America. (New York 1988) 222-243. Marshall J. Becker, “Hannah Freeman: An Eighteenth-Century Lenape Living and Working Among Colonial Farmers,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 114: (1990) 249-269. Marshall J. Becker, “Legends About Hannah Freeman (“Indian Hannah”): Squaring the Written Accounts with the Oral Tradition,” Keystone Folklore 4:2 (1992) 1-24. Jay Custer, “Hannah Freeman’s Baskets,” Pennsylvania Archaeologist. 68 no.1 (1998) 34-46. Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800. (New York and Cambridge, 1997). Francis Jennings, “Incident at Tulpehocken,” Pennsylvania History, 35:4 (October 1968) 335-55. Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies. (New York & London, 1984). Francis Jennings, ‘The Delaware Interregnum,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 89:2 (April 1965) 174-98. Barry C. Kent, Susquehanna’s Indians. (Harrisburg, PA, 1984). James Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier. (New York & London, 1999) Daniel K. Richter, ‘A Framework for Pennsylvania Indian History,” Pennsylvania History. 57 (1990) 236-261. Timothy Shannon, “Dressing for Success on the Mohawk Frontier: Hendrick, William Johnson, and the Indians Fashion,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, LIII, No. 1 (January 1996) 13-42. Ian K. Steele, “Exploding Colonial American History: Amerindian, Atlantic, and Global Perspectives,” Reviews in American History, 26 (1998) 70-95. Thomas J. Sugrue, “The Peopling and Depeopling of Early Pennsylvania: Indians and Colonists, 1680-1720,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 116: 1 (January 1992) 1-29. Frederick B. Tolles, James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America (Boston, 1957). Alden T. Vaughan, general ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607-1789:(Washington, D.C., University Publications of America, 1979), Vol. I: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629-1737; Volume II: Pennsylvania Treaties, 1737-1756. Anthony F. C. Wallace, King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung, 1700-1763. (Reprint, Salem, NH, 1970). Anthony F. C. Wallace, “Women, Land, and Society: Three Aspects of Aboriginal Delaware Life,” Pennsylvania Archaeologist, 17:1-4 (1947) 1-35. back to reports back to the Interpretive Plan back to Stenton's main page






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