In February 1722, a Seneca Indian man named Sawantaeny died, struck down by John Cartlidge, a white trader. Sawantaeny lived near Conestoga, Pennsylvania in an area that was home to a mix of tribes pushed off their ancestral lands in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Virginia by the new English colonists. Conestoga was a major hub for Indians trading furs and pelts for English goods, like cloth and guns and ammo.
Cartlidge was negotiating the purchase of Sawantaeny’s annual haul of furs and pelts. As usual, Cartlidge offered rock bottom prices and served copious amounts of rum during their negotiation. White traders routinely underbid the value of the furs and pelts while demanding exorbitant fees for the English products they sold. This practice was considered acceptable because the white settlers believed the Indians were racially inferior.
Sawantaeny protested that he was being cheated out of a fair price for his hard work. (Ask any gig worker how it feels to be low-balled on a project fee.) The argument degenerated into a fist fight. According to the Indian witnesses, John threw the first punch, making it murder. (Their testimony would never have been allowed in court because Indians were legally barred as witnesses, as were women and blacks.) According to John, his brother Edmund, and John’s indentured servants, Sawantaeny was the aggressor, making it a case of manslaughter.
Since Sawantaeny was a Seneca, the Iroquois Confederation had an interest in the outcome. The Iroquois Confederation had sufficient economic and political, meaning military, power to command attention. They wanted Governor Keith to meet with them because the Indians were “covered with night and wrapped in darkness”, meaning deeply grieved by the loss of Sawantaeny.
Indian tradition required that the victim’s family and the perpetrator should meet face to face so that the perpetrator could express regret, gifts could be exchanged, everyone could share a meal, and the social fabric could be restored. The underlying theme was not punishment, but acknowledging the loss so that harmony could be restored.
That was contrary to the English tradition of punishing wrongdoers. Pennsylvania Governor, Sir William Keith had just agreed to Quaker demands for a new criminal code that made more crimes punishable by hanging. The new criminal code was intended to uphold morality, in the lower classes, of course. The Quakers running the colony believed their wealth was a result of their moral superiority, ignoring the fact that their wealth was built on the labor of Indian hunters, white indentured servants, and Indian and African slaves (facts airbrushed out of the Pennsylvania state history I was taught years ago in 5th grade).
Governor Keith was an ambitious man looking to rebuild his family’s fortunes in the new colony. He was also an Anglican in a colony founded and controlled by Quakers. Keith’s early years as Governor were spent trying to out-maneuver the Quakers on the colonial Council. Keith didn’t believe that he was above the law (the last Englishman to argue that was King Charles I, who lost his head) but he didn’t like having his activities scrutinized by a bunch of moralistic Quakers
Keith’s main Quaker adversary was James Logan, Colonial Secretary (akin to a modern corporate Secretary, keeping the minutes of official meetings). Logan used confidential sources to keep tabs on Keith’s business dealings and sent regular reports to the Penn family claiming that Keith was trying to steal property owned by the Penns.
One of Governor Keith’s business deals involved building a copper mine near Conestoga with his business partner, John Cartlidge. The land was owned by either the Indians or the Penn family, but that didn’t stop them. This clandestine deal may explain why Governor Keith slow walked the investigation into the death of Sawantaeny, including questioning whether Sawantaeny was dead since no body had been found. (He wasn’t searching.)
A series of meetings were held over the following months at Conestoga, at which the Indians and colonists talked past each other due to their differing approaches to crime and punishment. At one of the meetings, John Cartlidge served as the lead interpreter for Governor Keith, even though he was the accused murderer.
After months of diplomatic chatter, the Iroquois leaders demanded that Governor Keith come to Albany to meet with them. In diplomacy (and business), the more powerful party chooses the meeting place. They finally met in Albany six months after the death of Sawantaeny.
The Iroquois requested that John Cartlidge should be released without a trial because his death would not restore harmony. Keith was happy to release Cartlidge on the grounds that there could not be a murder without a body. The Indians were satisfied because they got a face-to-face meeting at which Governor Keith expressed regret for the death of Sawantaeny, gifts were exchanged, meals were shared, and harmony was restored.
Governor Keith was satisfied because the Indians gave up ownership of the land where he planned to build a copper mine. In exchange for an (empty) promise to stop price gouging by white traders, the Iroquois ceded ownership to lands in western New York and Pennsylvania. The parties memorialized their agreement in the Great Treaty of 1722.
The treaty remains in effect today because it is the basis for white ownership of land in much of New York and Pennsylvania. Governor Keith never found copper and died broke. John Cartlidge was jailed several times on a charge of murder and died of disease soon after the case was dismissed. James Logan became mayor of Philadelphia and the patron of a young printer named Benjamin Franklin.
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