The historians cited below, some of whom are leading figures in the new Indian history movement, have tried with respect to the Seven Years' War (called the French and Indian War in the North American colonies) to uncover Native American perspectives in order to elucidate the actions and significances of the war more fully than previous scholarship had accomplished. They have merged methods and purviews of military, political, social, and cultural history in efforts to adequately account for the war's complicated causes, development, and consequences.

Francis Jennings has categorized France's wartime Indian allies in terms of their reliability. So-called "domesticated" Indians, who converted to Catholicism, left their tribes, and settled in French missions, were considered the most reliable. Potawatomis, Ojibwas, Ottawas, and other Indian groups who traveled long distances to join the fight were perceived as the next most reliable, as they could be counted on to remain after a battle and hold newly won territory rather than embark right away on the long trip home.

During the first four years of the war, however, Indian allies from the Ohio Valley region, most prominently the Delawares and Shawnees, became France's most important allies. They "unenthusiastically came to terms with the French," Richard White relates, when war began between the two European empires and especially after English General Edward Braddock failed to capture Fort Duquesne at present-day Pittsburgh. In that battle, most of France's Indian allies were Ottawas, Mississaugas, Wyandots, and Potawatomis fighting for captives and booty, according to Fred Anderson. After Braddock's defeat, the Ohio Indians, rebuffed by the arrogance of the British and fearing attack by the other tribes allied with the French, joined the latter in large numbers. Until they reached a separate peace with England in 1758, these Ohio Indians conducted devastating raids on frontier settlements in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

Shawnees and Delawares, originally "dependents" of the Iroquois, had migrated from Pennsylvania to the upper Ohio Valley during the second quarter of the 18th century as did numerous Indian peoples from other areas. Unlike the others, however, the groups arriving from the east came as "village fragments, families, even individual hunters," White notes, rather than as whole villages or tribes. They formed multiethnic villages, what White calls "the first republics," in lands claimed by both England and France, and were "trying to establish some basis for collective identity and action for the first time as the events of the war began to unfold," Eric Hinderaker relates. The Ohio Indians sought to "use the French to defeat the British," White contends, with the understanding that afterward, in the words of a Delaware, "we can drive away the French when we please."

In October 1758, the Ohio Indians reached a peace agreement with England stipulating that the British would relinquish claims to their lands on the Ohio, an agreement on which the British subsequently reneged. Without the support of the Ohio Indians, the French abandoned Fort Duquesne to the British, "a pivotal moment in American history," James H. Merrell has written. The Catholic Indians of the St. Lawrence missions remained allies of the French as the war continued, until the late summer of 1760, when the mission Indians ended their support of the French, and the latter shortly thereafter surrendered to the British. War between France and England, concluded in North America, continued elsewhere until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763.

“Conococheague” is a Delaware Indian phrase referring to a particular creek, the main branch of which begins in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and flows into Maryland. It crosses under the old Chesapeake & Ohio canal aqueduct near Williamsport, Maryland, and then into the Potomac River near Chambersburg. The name Conococheague, by extension, was later also applied to a mountain nearby.

The area drained in the watershed of the creek was the scene of fierce hostilities between the Delaware tribes and the early white settlers to the area that did not cease until a peace treaty was concluded in 1758.

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) public database entry for Conococheague Creek, magnanimously gives the following daunting list of variant spellings: Canigotschik, Conecocheague, Conegocheek, Conegocheige, Conegochiegh, Conegoge, Conegogee, Conegogeek, Conigochego, Conigotoschick, Conijachola, Connatachequa, Connogocheague, Conocochego, Cunnaquachegue, Cunnatachegue, Cunnatichegue, and Guneukitschik.

Some people are determined that the word is pronounced with the accent on the last syllable—“Kahn-uh-kuh-JIG.” However, the bulk of the evidence gives pride of place to putting the accent on the second to the last syllable.

The accepted pronunciation, according to AllRefer.com is “KAH-no-KAH-cheek,” with the accent on the penultimate syllable. And, listening to the folks at the Conococheague Institute in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, pronounce it, I heard “KAH-no-KAH-cheeg.”

In 1822, the Moravian missionary, John Gottlieb Heckewelder (1743-1823), widely traveled among the Delaware Indians, sent to the American Philosophical Society a long descriptive list he had compiled of Indian names of geographical features. On his list (p. 373, as published by the American Philosophical Society in 1834) was “Conococheague,” which he then phoneticized as “Guneukìtschik,” with the accent on the penultimate syllable. He offered the translation as “long indeed, very long indeed.”

In the seventeenth century, Dutchman Adrien Van der Donck described a woman’s preparation for childbirth among the Mohawk and Mahican Indians in what is now known as New York. He stated that pregnant women would “depart alone to a secluded place near a brook, or stream of water . . . and prepare a shelter for themselves with mats and coverings, where, provided with provisions necessary for them, they await their delivery without the company or aid of any person. . . . They rarely are sick from child-birth [and] suffer no inconveniences from the same.” Many similar descriptions of solitary, painless births exist among European observers of the Native Americans, but because most of these observers were men, and men rarely attended the birth of children, these descriptions are probably inaccurate. Although each indigenous culture had its own unique beliefs and rituals about childbirth, scholars believe that many First Peoples shared certain practices involving the participation of close family members and select others within the community.

During their pregnancies, women restricted their activities and took special care with their diet and behavior to protect the baby. The Cherokees, for example, believed that certain foods affected the fetus. Pregnant women avoided foods that they believed would harm the baby or cause unwanted physical characteristics. For example, they believed that eating raccoon or pheasant would make the baby sickly, or could cause death; consuming speckled trout could cause birthmarks; and eating black walnuts could give the baby a big nose. They thought that wearing neckerchiefs while pregnant caused umbilical strangulation, and lingering in doorways slowed delivery. Expectant mothers and fathers participated in rituals to guarantee a safe delivery, such as daily washing of hands and feet and employing medicine men to perform rites that would make deliveries easier.

As the birth grew closer, women and their families observed other rituals to ensure an easy and healthy birth. Nineteenth-century anthropologist James Mooney recorded one Cherokee ritual intended to frighten the child out of the mother’s womb. A female relative of the mother would say: “Listen! You little man, get up now at once. There comes an old woman. The horrible [old thing] is coming, only a little way off. Listen! Quick! Get your bed and let us run away. Yu!” The female relative then repeated the formula, substituting “little woman” and “your grandfather,” in case the baby was a girl. Van der Donck described a Mahican concoction made of root bark that the mother drank shortly before labor began. Many indigenous peoples used similar remedies. Cherokee women drank an infusion of wild cherry bark to speed delivery.

Despite numerous descriptions of solitary births, other accounts describe births attended by a midwife and other close family members. Men were rarely allowed in the birth room, and they were never allowed to see the birth. A woman in labor stood, knelt, or sat, but she never gave birth lying down. Usually no one bothered to catch the baby, who fell onto leaves placed beneath the mother. Van der Donck and Mooney described post-delivery rituals in which the mothers ceremonially plunged the infant into the river, an act they repeated daily for two years. British Lieutenant Henry Timberlake, an envoy to the Cherokee in the mid-eighteenth century, stated that this ritual made “the children acquire such strength, that no ricketty or deformed are found among them.”

European descriptions of Native American women’s quick recovery from childbirth may have been exaggerated. But generally, Indian women’s excellent physical conditioning certainly aided in their recovery from childbirth. Barring any serious complications – which, of course, did happen occasionally – Native American women returned to their regular duties in a very short period of time.

In 1744, Canasatego, leader of the Onondaga nation and spokesman for the Iroquois Confederation, advised the British colonists:

". . . We heartily recommend Union and a Good Agreement between you our Brethren. Our wise Forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations; this has made us formidable, this has given us great weight and Authority with our Neighboring Nations. We are a Powerfull confederacy, and by your observing the same Methods our wise Forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh Strength and Power."

Canasatego’s admonition and other evidence has led some scholars to believe that Native American, particularly Iroquois, governments served as models for the new nation’s government. Others refute that theory and argue that the framers of the United States Constitution and other documents did not need the example of Indian governments because they could refer to numerous English and Continental European political theories for their ideas.

The Iroquois Confederation is the oldest association of its kind in North America. Although some scholars believe that the Five Nations (Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk, and Seneca) formed their Iroquois League in the 12th century, the most popular theory holds that the confederation was created around 1450, before Columbus’ “discovery” of America. These five nations bore common linguistic and cultural characteristics, and they formed the alliance to protect themselves from invasion and to deliberate on common causes. In the 18th century, the Tuscarora joined the league to increase the membership to six nations.

Those who support the theory that the First Peoples influenced the drafting of the founding documents point to the words of founders such as Benjamin Franklin, who in 1751 wrote to his printer colleague James Parker that “It would be a strange thing if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies.” Native American Studies Professor Bruce Johansen and American Studies Professor Donald Grinde, among others, argue that American colonists, in Johansen’s words, “drew freely on the image of the American Indian as an exemplar of the spirit of liberty they so cherished.” These scholars argue that the framers of American governments understood and admired Native American government structures, and they borrowed certain indigenous concepts for their own governments.

Other scholars are not convinced. Anthropologist Elisabeth Tooker, for example, argued that European political theory and precedent furnished the models for American Founders, while evidence for Indian influence was very thin. Although the concept of the Iroquoian Confederation may have been similar to the United States’ first efforts to unite alliance, the Iroquois constructed their government under very different principles. The member nations of the Iroquois League all lived under matrilineal societies, in which they inherited status and possessions through the mother’s line. Headmen were not elected, but rather clan mothers chose them. Representation was not based on equality or on population. Instead, the number of Council members per nation was based on the traditional hierarchy of nations within the confederation. Moreover, the League of Six Nations did not have a centralized authority like that of the federal system the Euro-Americans eventually adopted. These arguments are, however, intriguing. Curious to know more? Read the debate between Elisabeth Tooker and Bruce Johansen, and the articles in the William and Mary Quarterly Forum (1996) cited below.

You have identified a person who I'd like to know more about myself! History is always about solving puzzles and mysteries, and I have looked closely at the clues your question provides: African ancestry, slave status, literacy, sympathy with the Continental Army during the Revolution, and connections to a Native American community. But a cursory search through the historical literature hasn't turned up one individual with this particular life story. Several different individuals have elements of it, however.

One such person is Joseph Louis Cook, the son of an African-American father and an Abenaki mother who had both been taken captive by the Iroquois. Cook himself was raised in the Mohawk community and played a prominent role fighting on behalf of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. The Mohawk are a matrilineal people (they trace their kinship and identity through their mothers), and so Cook would have likely identified himself as a member of the Iroqouis confederacy; he married a Mohawk woman and served as a diplomatic chief of the Oneida.

Another individual was Pierre Bonga, whose parents had been enslaved and then freed by a British officer on Mackinack Island in Michigan. Pierre went on to work in the fur trade in what became Minnesota and married an Ojibwe woman; at least one of their children, George, also worked in the fur trade and is known as the first African-American born in Minnesota. Unlike the Mohawk, the Ojibwe are patrilineal, tracing their tribal identity through their fathers, so it seems likely that George would have thought of himself as African-American rather than Ojibwe.

Another prominent person in this time period was Crispus Attucks, the first person killed in the Boston Massacre. His father had been enslaved and his mother was a Natick Indian; Attucks himself was a slave who escaped and became very active in the Revolutionary movement in Boston. Whereas the men mentioned above were probably born free, Attucks was likely born a slave and that status may have influenced his identification as an African-American. Certainly he is remembered as one of our African-American heros of the American Revolution, and his Native ancestry is underemphasized.

Natick Indians spoke a language from the Algonquin language family and likely possessed cultural futures similar to other Northeastern Algonquin peoples, including patrilineal kinship. But the Native world of the Northeast was in such flux at this moment in history that it is difficult to say for certain how kinship practices influenced the identity of men like Crispus Attucks. I speak of these tribal communities in the past tense, but of course they still exist today and practice many of the same cultural traditions.

The reference you make to the individual's literacy reminds me of Frederick Douglass's experience as a slave in Baltimore, where his master's wife taught him to read and write. Douglass remarked that American slaves thought themselves the most forsaken of God's children, until they met the American Indian. The history of African-Native interactions in North America goes back to the 1526 expedition of Lucas Vasquez de Allyon, a Spanish soldier who established a colony at the mouth of the Peedee River in South Carolina. Four months later, Allyon died and the colony fell apart; the 100 enslaved Africans that Allyon brought with him were free to join local Native communities.

When we consider this long history, then—one that dates back to the very invasion of the Americas—we have to recognize that ideas about racial and cultural identity have changed significantly over time. As i indicated above, these men that we remember as African-American today may not have thought of themselves that way. Native peoples were in power long enough through the 18th century to exert considerable influence over how their communities functioned and how they determined belonging. So even though Frederick Douglass's estimation of Native-African relations may have rung true in the nineteenth century (after Native nations had been removed from the Southeast and their lands taken from them in Northeast), it was unlikely that all Native people thought their Creator had forsaken them in the 18th century.

Similarly, African-American literature flourished in the 18th century, as freed slaves wrote their life histories. Dozens of these tracts have survived, emerging from a time in our history when whites did not universally see slave literacy as a threat to the social order. I suspect if the story you seek exists in one person, it is to be found in this body of slave narratives. Not coincidentally, the Removal and dispossession of Indians occurred around the same time as increased repression of African-Americans, both free and enslaved, in the 1830s.

What changed between the relative autonomy enjoyed by Native and African Americans in the 18th century and the oppression and dispossession they experienced in the 19th century? The American Revolution. This was an event driven by a desire for freedom from the political authority of Great Britain and a desire to control Indian lands that Britain had largely prevented American colonists from settling. Despite these twin aims, men like Joseph Louis Cook (later known as Colonel Louis) fought for the Americans for their own strategic reasons—not to advance American interests, but to advance what he perceived as Iroquois interests. The ideal of freedom promoted by the Founding Fathers did not extend to anyone but free white males, but of course men like Crispus Attucks and many others fought to be included in this vision.

It was a tough road and remained so—after the colonists finally eliminated the British presence in the War of 1812, African Americans and Native Americans were left to deal with a regime that had no interest in their freedom or their preservation as autonomous people. The slave-led Haitian Revolution and slave revolts in the new United States drove various states, particularly in the South, to crack down on what freedoms enslaved people enjoyed, while at the same time conspiring with the federal government to dispossess Indians of their lands through Removal. The United States only exercised a vague authority over places like Minnesota and Michigan (then known as the Northwest Territory), where the Bonga family settled. It's possible that the individual you seek indeed settled in one of these loosely-controlled areas after learning that the opportunity he sought was not available in the states. For example, even though he fought with the Americans and presumably should have found a home in the United States, Cook actually went to Canada with a group of Mohawks after the Revolutionary War.

Your question strikes at the heart of an American history that has been largely ignored, that of the productive relationships between Indians and African Americans. While there is some tension between certain members of these groups today, as seen in the controversy over the status of the Cherokee Freedmen, I believe it is safe to say that such tensions are a product of how the United States expanded in the 19th century, not inherent racism or animosity between them.

Lone Wolf v Hitchcock (187 U.S. 553, 1903) was part of a long string of treaties and legislative and judicial measures that displaced North America’s First Peoples from their ancestral lands, hemmed them into “reservations,” and eventually detribalized them. This Supreme Court decision originated on the Kiowa-Comanche reservation, which the Medicine Lodge Treaty (1867) had established in Indian Territory. The treaty guaranteed the Kiowa and Comanche “absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of these reservation lands and stipulated that in order for any portion of the reservation lands to be ceded to the U.S., three-fourths of the adult males in the tribe had to give their approval. However, in 1900, without Native American consent, Congress passed an Allotment Act that divided the Kiowa-Comanche lands into 160-acre allotments to give to the Native American residents of the reservation. Those who accepted the allotments were also given American citizenship. The “surplus” lands left after the allotment were to be sold to whites, and the Kiowa and Comanche were to receive about one dollar per acre for these lands. In 1902, Kiowa headman Lone Wolf sued newly-appointed Secretary of the Interior Ethan Allen Hitchcock to stop the allotment of the Reservation. Lone Wolf argued that the allotment was a denial of due process and a violation of the consent requirement in the Medicine Lodge treaty. The federal government’s lawyers asserted that Congress had a right to alter the terms of the treaty through legislation, because it had paramount authority over Indian affairs. Justice A.C. Bradley of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia rejected the Kiowa claim that the 1900 Act deprived tribes of due process. He stated that lack of consent was not relevant because Native American matters were under the exclusive control of Congress. The Court of Appeals upheld Bradley’s decision, and the United States Supreme Court agreed.

Justice Edward Douglas White’s opinion stated that Congress had the right to alter the terms of treaties with Native American tribes, because “authority over the tribal relations of the Indians has been exercised by Congress from the beginning, and the power has always been deemed a political one.” The judiciary could not interfere in Congress’s “plenary power.” This decision was based on the idea that Indians held dependent status to the United States government. Calling Native Americans “the wards of the nation,” White stated that “from their very weakness and helplessness, so largely due to the course of dealing of the Federal government with them and the treaties in which it has been promised, there arises the duty of protection, and with it the power.” This assertion of paternal dominion over Native Americans reversed the Supreme Court’s acknowledgment of a certain measure of Indian autonomy in previous cases, such as Worcester v Georgia 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832). Shortly after the decision, the U.S. opened Kiowa lands to white settlers, and over 50,000 settled on the “surplus” lands that Kiowa and Comanche had possessed under the Medicine Lodge Treaty. The “plenary power” doctrine first affirmed in Lone Wolf v Hitchcock is still valid Indian policy today.