FC (Lb in DNA: RG 75, LSIA); in a clerk’s hand; at head of text: “To our Brother the President of the United States”; in margin at head of text: “Conference held with the Delaware and Shawanoe Deputation”; at foot of text: “The above is a faithfull interpretation of a speech delvered to the President of the United States on the 5th: day of February 1802. by Black Hoof a Shawnoe Chief, in behalf of himself and the deputation from the Delaware & Shawnoe Nations then present,” with facsimile signature of George Ash by a mark, attested by Joshua Wingate, Jr.

Black Hoof (Catecahassa, Cutthewekasaw), a principal civil chief of the Shawnees, was known for his eloquence and oratorical skill. The year of his birth is unknown, but he was thought to have been at least in his nineties when he died in 1831. He fought against the Virginians in the battle of Point Pleasant in 1774 and resisted the United States until 1794. He signed the treaty of Greenville and urged the Shawnees to adapt their way of life in order to coexist peacefully with the United States. He lived at Wapakoneta, on the Auglaize River in the northwestern part of what became the state of Ohio, where many Shawnees moved after the Greenville treaty. Beginning in 1805, Black Hoof’s authority came under challenge from Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet, who led a reform movement based on a rejection of accommodation with whites and their “civilization.” The Prophet attempted to turn the Shawnees against Black Hoof by accusing the chief of witchcraft. Black Hoof journeyed to Washington again in 1807 and 1808 and emulated Little Turtle by arranging for the establishment of a demonstration farm on the Shawnees’ lands under the auspices of the Society of Friends. The Prophet’s threat to Black Hoof’s leadership lessened in 1808, when the Prophet and his brother, Tecumseh, moved to the Wabash Valley. Later, Black Hoof resisted pressures to relocate west of the Mississippi. He remained at Wapakoneta, where in the 1820s he was a source of information for whites seeking to document the Shawnees’ cosmology and culture. Although he relied on interpreters during his 1802 visit to Washington, later in his life Black Hoof could communicate in the English language (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, New York and Oxford, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; Dowd, “Thinking and Believing,” description begins Gregory E. Dowd, “Thinking and Believing: Nativism and Unity in the Ages of Pontiac and Tecumseh,” American Indian Quarterly, 16 (1992) description ends 317–20; Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet, 170–4; Calloway, Shawnees, 54, 72–3; American Anthropologist, new ser., 42 [1940], 145–7; 46 [1944], 370, 372–5).

Our great friend Isaac Zean: in 1753, when Isaac Zane was nine years old, he was captured on the Virginia fronter by Wyandot warriors. He remained with the Indians as an adult. A merchant who met him in 1789 noted that Zane “still retains the English Language and behaves verry well.” Zane was the older brother of Ebenezer Zane, the founder of the town of Wheeling, whose recollection of events from the 1770s TJ used in An Appendix to the Notes on Virginia Relative to the Murder of Logan’s Family, published in 1800. This Isaac Zane was not TJ’s acquaintance of that name who lived in the Shenandoah Valley and died in 1795 (Dwight L. Smith, ed., The Western Journals of John May, Ohio Company Agent and Business Adventurer [Cincinnati, 1961], 131; John Gerald Patterson, “Ebenezer Zane, Frontiersman,” West Virginia History, 12 [1950], 7; Roger W. Moss, Jr., “Isaac Zane, Jr., A ‘Quaker for the Times’,” VMHB description begins Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 1893- description ends , 77 [1969], 302, 304; JS description begins Journal of the Senate of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1820–21, 5 vols. description ends , 3:164–5; Vol. 28:350; Vol. 29:5; Vol. 31:479–80n).

For the dividing line established by the Treaty of Greenville, see Conference with Little Turtle, 4 Jan., Document I. Lorimein: a place called Loromie’s store on the Great Miami River was one of the landmarks used in the treaty to define the boundary and for other purposes (U.S. Statutes at Large description begins Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States … 1789 to March 3, 1845, Boston, 1855–56, 8 vols. description ends , 7:49–50).

We wish no indian should disturb us: Dearborn may have had discussions with Black Hoof’s associates that were not recorded as part of the formal conference. “They are extremely anxious to have a division of lands,” Dearborn wrote William Henry Harrison on 23 Feb., “and to have a line agreed on and marked between the Delawares and their neighbors.” TJ had assured them “that whenever they can agree with their neighbors on a boundary line in your presence, and the parties interested shall enter into explicit stipulations on the subject to your satisfaction, that you will be requested to have the line so agreed on, run and marked at the expence of the United States” (Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1934–75, 28 vols. description ends , 7:49).

Killing our game: the treaty gave the Indian tribes the right, “so long as they demean themselves peaceably,” to hunt both on their own lands and in the territory they ceded to the United States (same, 52).

Under Article 4 of the treaty, a tribe could request payment of part of its annuity in farming tools, domestic animals, or subsidies to “usefull artificers” (same, 51).

John Gibson was the secretary of Indiana Territory. Gibson in 1774 translated Logan’s address to Lord Dunmore, which TJ published in Notes on the State of Virginia. Beginning in 1797, TJ consulted Gibson as he compiled the Appendix to the Notes in response to Luther Martin’s newspaper attacks (DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, New York, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Vol. 29:408–10).

Little girl: the Greenville treaty required all parties to give up any prisoners they held. In the latter part of 1800 and into 1801, a report circulated in the United States alleging that the Indians of the Northwest still had white captives, particularly ones who had been so young when they were taken that they had forgotten their original names and identities. In a letter of 23 Feb. 1802 to Harrison that discussed the visit by Black Hoof’s delegation, Henry Dearborn said that “a complaint was made by them relating to a white child taken from one of their people which case we understand is now pending in the District Court at Kentuckey, and of course no measures could be taken relative thereto.” The person in question was probably Nancy Mason, in whose behalf Harry Innes, the U.S. district judge for Kentucky, had published a notice dated 6 Nov. 1801. Innes’s announcement, which was intended to help locate members of Nancy’s extended family, did not state her age, but indicated that she had recently been “returned from captivity.” Shawnees had killed several members of her family and taken Nancy and her brother prisoner on the Ohio River about 12 years earlier (Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1934–75, 28 vols. description ends , 7:49; Gazette of the United States, 1 Dec. 1801; Stewart’s Kentucky Herald, 24 Feb. 1801; U.S. Statutes at Large description begins Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States … 1789 to March 3, 1845, Boston, 1855–56, 8 vols. description ends , 7:49).

An article of the Treaty of Greenville stated that trade “shall be opened” with the tribes that were parties to the treaty. The United States was to license all traders and monitor their conduct. Built in 1791, Fort Hamilton was on the Great Miami River about 35 miles north of Cincinnati (same, 7:52; Washington, Papers, Pres. Ser., 11:309n).

François or Francis Duchouquet, a French Canadian by birth, traded in the Indian country and had commercial ties to Detroit. He probably accompanied Black Hoof’s delegation to Washington as the second person referred to as an interpreter, and on 15 Feb. the House of Representatives received a petition from him seeking compensation for funds he had expended to ransom white captives in 1790. By an act of 16 Mch. 1802, Congress granted him $291.84. Dearborn asked Harrison to consider the question of the land grant Black Hoof requested for Duchouquet (John Sugden, Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees [Lincoln, Neb., 2000], 308n; Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1934–75, 28 vols. description ends , 7:49; JHR description begins Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1826, 9 vols. description ends , 4:97; U.S. Statutes at Large description begins Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States … 1789 to March 3, 1845, Boston, 1855–56, 8 vols. description ends , 6:46).

George Ash had been captured as a boy and adopted by the Shawnees. He was with the Indians who routed Arthur St. Clair’s army in 1791, and the next year he accompanied a Shawnee delegation that traveled to meet with the Cherokees and the Creeks (Sugden, Blue Jacket, 18, 121–2, 138–9). Ash, like Duchouquet, petitioned Congress during the stay of Black Hoof’s delegation in Washington. Ash’s petition, presented to the House of Representatives on 29 Jan., said the Shawnees had given him land “for various services rendered” and asked for confirmation of title to the tract. A House committee interviewed Black Hoof’s party and recommended that Ash receive a tract limited to one square mile. No further action was taken at that time, and Ash petitioned again late in 1804. Reluctant to permit Indian tribes to make land grants, Congress, in a March 1807 act relating to public lands, gave Ash a preemption right allowing him to purchase 640 acres (JHR description begins Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1826, 9 vols. description ends , 4:76; 5:53–4; ASP description begins American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1832–61, 38 vols. description ends , Public Lands, 1:111, 238, 533; U.S. Statutes at Large description begins Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States … 1789 to March 3, 1845, Boston, 1855–56, 8 vols. description ends , 2:449). According to the Greenville treaty, the boundary line of the Indians’ territory ended at the Ohio River across from the mouth of the Kentucky River (same, 7:49).

Sending the doctor: according to a story in newspapers in the spring of 1802, before Little Turtle’s group left Washington, TJ convinced the “sagacious chief” and the members of his party to be vaccinated with kine pox. TJ also, the report stated, gave the delegation’s interpreter some of the vaccine to take with him, along with instructions for how to begin vaccinating the Indians in the Northwest. The report may relate to Black Hoof’s party rather than Little Turtle’s, or perhaps some members of both groups received vaccination and the account that appeared in the newspapers conflated the events. The report, which gave Edward Gantt’s name as “Ganet,” stated that he vaccinated Little Turtle and 14 “other warriors.” That figure comes much closer to matching the size of Black Hoof’s group than Little Turtle’s much smaller traveling party, although according to Black Hoof it was only some of the younger members of his group who received the vaccine anyway—presumably those not yet exposed to smallpox—and not the entire party. According to the published report, Little Turtle received the vaccine first, leading the way for the others. However, Benjamin Rush had inoculated Little Turtle against smallpox on one of the Miami’s visits to Philadelphia in the 1790s. (John Adams probably saw the effects of the inoculation when he noted in February 1798 that Little Turtle seemed to be recovering from the disease.) Little Turtle might have undergone vaccination in 1802 to inspire other members of his party, except the published account portrayed him as ignorant of the concept of inoculation until TJ explained it to him on that occasion. Almost certainly the newspaper story, which may have originated in New England, garbled and embellished whatever did occur, and Black Hoof’s reference above appears to be the most reliable evidence of the vaccination of Native American visitors in Washington in the early part of 1802. In a letter to Edward Jenner in April of that year, Benjamin Waterhouse gave an account that was very similar to the one that appeared in the newspapers and likely originated with the same unidentified source, except Waterhouse had “nine or ten more warriors” being vaccinated in addition to Little Turtle (Boston Independent Chronicle, 20 May 1802; Keene New-Hampshire Sentinel, 29 May; Philadelphia Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 1 June; George W. Corner, ed., The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush: His “Travels Through Life” together with his Commonplace Book for 1789–1813 [Princeton, 1948], 240; Volney, View description begins C. F. C. Volney, A View of the Soil and Climate of the United States of America, trans. Charles Brockden Brown, Philadelphia, 1804; repr. 1968 description ends , 357–8, 370; Carter, Little Turtle description begins Harvey Lewis Carter, The Life and Times of Little Turtle: First Sagamore of the Wabash, Urbana, Ill., 1987 description ends , 4–5; Robert H. Halsey, How the President, Thomas Jefferson, and Doctor Benjamin Waterhouse Established Vaccination as a Public Health Procedure [New York, 1936], 54–5).

John Wilkins had advanced funds to Mr. Darah (or Darrah) at Pittsburgh as Black Hoof’s deputation journeyed to Washington. Dearborn provided Darah with $255 in Washington and authorized more money for him in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh as necessary to cover the travelers’ costs (Dearborn to William Irvine, 10 Feb., and to Wilkins, 16 Feb., Lb in DNA: RG 75, LSIA; Irvine to Dearborn, 9 Mch., recorded in DNA: RG 107, RLRMS).