1. Putnam, writing from Marietta, Ohio, had enclosed in his letter to Henry Knox of 20 Dec. 1792, “the oreginal treaty of Peace” and a journal of the treaty proceedings (OMC: Putnam Papers). GW received “the original Treaty & proceedings” from Knox on 12 Feb. 1793 (JPP, description begins Dorothy Twohig, ed. The Journal of the Proceedings of the President, 1793–1797. Charlottesville, Va., 1981. description ends 51). Copies of these two documents are in OMC: Putnam Papers, and they, along with Putnam’s letter to Knox, are printed in Buell, Putnam Memoirs, description begins Rowena Buell, ed. The Memoirs of Rufus Putnam and Certain Official Papers and Correspondence. Boston and New York, 1903. description ends 335–66, 371–74. The treaty also is printed in ASP, Indian Affairs, description begins Walter Lowrie et al., eds. American State Papers. Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States. 38 vols. Washington, D.C., Gales and Seaton, 1832–61. description ends 1:338–40.

In his letter to Knox of 20 Dec., Putnam also enclosed his “Speech to the Indians on the 29th of September” and a speech he sent “to the Dellawares & other tribes Dated the 6th of October.” GW, in turn, submitted these speeches to the Senate with this letter (DNA: RG 46, Second Congress, 1791–1793, Senate Records of Executive Proceedings, President’s Messages—Indian Relations; the letter to the Delaware Indians is dated 5 October). These two speeches are also in OMC: Putnam Papers and printed in Buell, Putnam Memoirs, description begins Rowena Buell, ed. The Memoirs of Rufus Putnam and Certain Official Papers and Correspondence. Boston and New York, 1903. description ends 367–69).

The controversial fourth article reads: “The United States Solemnly guarantee to the Wabash and Illinoi Nations or Tribes, of Indians all the lands to which they have a just claim, And no part shall ever be taken from them but by a fair purchase and to their satisfaction. That the lands originally belong to the Indians, it is theirs and theirs only. that they have a right to Sell and a right to refuse to Sell and that the United States will protect them in their Said just rights” (OMC: Putnam Papers).

Putnam had written in his letter to Knox of 20 Dec. that “by the fourth article of the Treaty the United States guarantee to the Indians All the lands to which they have a Just Claim. I chose this general mode of expretion because I was not furnished with documents to assertain the lands they have given away or otherwise disposed of, & also because I concived it most agreable to my haveing instructions before the Signing the treaty. good reason to beleve I Should persuaid them to Send a deputation to Philadelphia . . . (the tract on the Wabash river which they [declared] in the proceeding of the 26th of September to have ben given to the french is at least 50 mile Square)” (OMC: Putnam Papers; Buell, Putnam Memoirs, description begins Rowena Buell, ed. The Memoirs of Rufus Putnam and Certain Official Papers and Correspondence. Boston and New York, 1903. description ends 371–74). On 7 Feb., GW had instructed Knox to have the treaty “with Genl. Putnam’s explanation of some parts of it” prepared for submission to the Senate, and on 11 Feb. he repeated this request (JPP, description begins Dorothy Twohig, ed. The Journal of the Proceedings of the President, 1793–1797. Charlottesville, Va., 1981. description ends 44, 49). The enclosed explanation of the fourth article may refer to Putnam’s letter of 20 Dec. or possibly to one he wrote at Philadelphia to Knox on 11 Feb., in which he explained that “it was never comtemplated by me, nor the indians who met me in council at Vincennes that the United States conceded to them any right to sell their lands to any other power then the Goverment of the Union, under whose protection they then freely acknowledge themselves to be” (OMC: Putnam Papers; Buell, Putnam Memoirs, description begins Rowena Buell, ed. The Memoirs of Rufus Putnam and Certain Official Papers and Correspondence. Boston and New York, 1903. description ends 378).

The enclosed map has not been identified, but it may have been similar to one found in OMC: Putnam Papers and printed, facing p. 366, ibid. The enclosed general claim of the Indians has not been identified.

2. The interpreter Jean-Baptiste Maillet had accompanied a delegation of Wabash and Illinois chiefs who had arrived in Philadelphia in late December 1792 (see Pennsylvania Gazette [Philadelphia], 2 Jan. 1793; Thomas Jefferson to GW, 1 Feb., and note 2). He had brought with him a deed, in French, concerning an earlier sale of lands now disclaimed by the Wabash and Illinois Indians. Putnam’s certificate, which he wrote at the bottom of the translation of this deed is dated “Philadelphia 6th February 1793” and reads, “At the Treaty held with the Wabash and Illinois Indians by me in the month of September 1792—the said Indians disclaimed the validity of the within Deed, excepting the Tract on the Wabash to their fathers the French—as mentioned in the proceedings of the said Treaty.” Both the French version and the translation of the deed, with Putnam’s certificate, are in DNA: RG 46, Second Congress, 1791–1793, Senate Records of Executive Proceedings, President’s Messages—Indian Relations; the translation, with Putnam’s certificate, is in ASP, Indian Affairs, description begins Walter Lowrie et al., eds. American State Papers. Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States. 38 vols. Washington, D.C., Gales and Seaton, 1832–61. description ends 1:338–40.

Putnam reiterated the Indians’s rejection of this deed in his letter to Knox of 13 Feb. from Philadelphia, in which he wrote: “I beg leve to observe as the Chiefs did not express them Selves clearly in council with respect to the lands they had given away or Sold, I made it a point to enquire of Some principle Chiefs with respect to a Sale made to Louis Viviatte and others, and was informed (By, Rene Lodert [Coder], an inhabitent of Vincens and an Adopted Chief among the Piankeshaws, and by Wm Wells, who has previous to June last resided eight or nine years with the Eel Creek and is an adopted Chief in that tribe, both Sworn interpreters at the Treaty) that the Indians disclaimed the Validity of that pretended Sale, alledging that it was don by those who had no right to Sell, that none by the Piankeshaws recived the pay or were concerned in the business and that the lands belonged to all the Wabash Tribes in Common” (OMC: Putnam Papers; Buell, Putnam Memoirs, description begins Rowena Buell, ed. The Memoirs of Rufus Putnam and Certain Official Papers and Correspondence. Boston and New York, 1903. description ends 378–79).

3. Knox submitted copies of his letters to Putnam of 22 May and 7 Aug. 1792 to the U. S. Senate on 7 Nov. as part of a report on Indian affairs (GW’s Address to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 6 Nov. 1792, n.1).

4. On 28 Feb. the Senate resolved “That the further consideration of the treaty be postponed until the next session of Congress, and that, in the mean time, the President be requested to cause an explanation of the fourth article to be negotiated with the said Indians; reserving the pre-emptive right of the United States to the lands of the Indians, conformably with the idea suggested by him in his message of the 13th February, instant” (Executive Journal, description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America: From the commencement of the First, to the termination of the Nineteenth Congress. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C., 1828. description ends 135). In an attempt by the administration to comply with the Senate’s request for further negotiation with the Wabash and Illinois Indians, part of the instructions to the commissioners appointed to attend a treaty at Lower Sandusky in the late spring of 1793 addressed this issue (see Knox to GW, 16 Feb. 1793, and note 1, and to GW, 2 Jan. 1794, DLC:GW). On 9 Jan. 1794 the Senate, by a vote of 21 to 4, refused to ratify this treaty (ibid., 146).