Captain Pipe

Captain Pipe (* probably 1740; † 1818 ), also called Konieschquanoheel or Hobocan , was a chief of the Munsee , a tribe of the Lenni Lenape , and a member of the Wolf Clan .

The Lenape were reluctant to use their real name and nicknames were very common. For example, the real name of Captain Pipe was Konieschquanoheel , which means maker of daylight . His nickname, however, was Hobocan , which means tobacco pipe , hence its historical name Captain Pipe .

Adolescent years

Statue of Captain Pipe in Barberton, Ohio

The date of birth of Captain Pipes is controversial, some historians pin it to 1725, while others say he was born around 1740, which is more likely. Little is known about his youth. Presumably he was born on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and his uncle was Chief Custaloga. He spent his early years either in Custalogas village on French Creek in present-day Mercer County in Pennsylvania or in the second Lenape village of Cussewago in present-day Meadville in Crawford County.

Captain Pipe was first mentioned in July 1759 as a participant in a conference at Fort Pitt attended by the Iroquois warriors , Shawnee , Lenni Lenape and the British Indian agent Hugh Mercer. Around this time the Munsee lived at the confluence of the Sandy and Tuscarawas Rivers.

Pipe was probably only nineteen at the time, so much too young to be known. The next time his name appears in 1762 on an agreement between the Lenape and the Moravian missionary Karl Friedrich Post. Post visited the Lenape together with the young John Heckewelder , who was supposed to introduce the Indians to Christianity. They wanted to build a log cabin there as a school and mission building and mark out a small field for growing corn. However, the Lenape feared that the British would build a fort on this site. It was not until Post had allied their concerns that they signed a contract allowing the missionaries to build a garden 50 paces in each direction for growing corn and vegetables for their own use. It fell to the young chief Hobocan to mark the field with posts at every corner. He was very suspicious of the missionaries, as his people had learned much injustice from the European settlers in Delaware , New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Enemy of the long knives

In 1764, Colonel Henry Bouquet led a campaign against the tribes on the Muskingum River during the Pontiac Uprising . When he reached Fort Pitt with his troops, he interrupted the march for a few days. Some Indians appeared on the north bank of the Ohio , crossed the river and wanted to speak to the British. However, they were unable to make their concerns understandable to the military and were suspected and detained as spies. One of them was believed to be the young Captain Pipe, who had to stay in Fort Pitt until Colonel Bouquet returned from the Muskingum River. Upon his arrival, he dictated the harsh terms of peace to the Lenape and Shawnee. The Indians were outraged about this and determined Captain Pipes future hostile attitude towards the long knives , as the militant white border fighters were called by the Indians.

In contrast to Captain Pipe, White Eyes , chief of the Turtle Clan , was friendly towards the missionaries and white settlers in western Pennsylvania. In 1765, Captain Pipe attended a conference in Fort Pitt with 600 Indians, and again in 1768 when more than 1,000 Iroquois, Lenape, Shawnee, Wyandot and Mohegan met. In the meantime, a power struggle had developed between White Eyes and Captain Pipe at the council meetings. White Eyes was a sincere, courageous man and feared that war against the whites on the border of the settlement could lead to punitive military expeditions. Captain Pipe, on the other hand, was self-confident and ambitious, he hated the long knives and wanted the time when he could dig up the hatchet. The young warriors supported his war plans, but most members of White Eyes' turtle clan were absolutely against it.

In 1771 he sent a message to John Penn , the governor of Pennsylvania, complaining about white aggression and wrongdoing. But nothing changed, and in 1774 Captain Pipe, White Eyes and other chiefs met with Governor Dunmore's agent, John Conelly, at Fort Pitt to discuss recent raids on Indian territory and the murder of the Logans family , a Mingo chief , to speak. An effort was made to reach an understanding, but in vain, because a little later, at the confluence of the Kanawha in the Ohio River, the battle of Point Pleasant between Lord Dunmore's troops and Indians took place. It is not known how many Lenape took part in that losing battle that the Indians eventually lost. Around 1773 Captain Pipe succeeded Chief Custaloga.

American War of Independence

Colonel William Crawford

In 1775 the American War of Independence (1775–1782) broke out. This further exacerbated the conflictual situation in the border region and atrocities between white settlers and Indians were repeated. In 1778 a new conference was called in Fort Pitt, attended by the two representatives of the new American administration, Andrew and Thomas Lewis, the Lenape chiefs White Eyes, Killbuck and Captain Pipe. They signed the first treaty between the new United States government, the Continental Congress , and the Indians.

In February 1778, the Americans began their first campaign in the Ohio area to prevent British activities in the region. General Edward Hand led 500 Pennsylvania militiamen in a march from Fort Pitt to the Cuyahoga River to destroy British arms caches for the Indians. Due to the bad weather, the expedition missed its destination and on the march back some of Hands' people attacked peaceful Lenni Lenape, killing a man and several women and children, including family members of Captain Pipe. Hand's campaign was later nicknamed the Squaw Campaign .

That same year, General Lachlan McIntosh, the commandant of Fort Pitt, asked the Lenape for permission to march through their land against the British in Detroit. The Lenape allowed it on condition that the Americans build a fort nearby for protection from the British and white settlers. McIntosh agreed, had Fort Laurens built near the Lenape Villages in eastern Ohio, and called on the Lenape to join him in fighting Detroit. They soon realized that the Americans were far too weak to protect them against the British and their Indian allies. Captain Pipe and many Lenape left the Tuscarawas River and moved to the Walhonding River, about 20 km above the present-day town of Coshocton.

Nevertheless, Captain Pipe initially remained neutral until the American Colonel Daniel Brodhead destroyed the Lenape village of Coshocton in April 1781. Then Pipe moved with the surviving Lenape from the Walhonding River to the militant Indian villages of the Wyandot and Seneca on the Sandusky River. On Tymochtee Creek they built a village known as Pipes Town , near what is now Crawford, Wyandot County. There they were supplied with blankets, weapons and ammunition by the British from Detroit and raided American settlers in western Pennsylvania. In the fall, Pipe moved with 300 warriors to the Tuscarawas River to evacuate the Christian Lenape or Moravian Indians living in huts and bring them to the Sandusky in Captive Town .

In early March 1782, 160 Pennsylvania militiamen came to Ohio under Colonel David Williamson . They were looking for Indians who had previously attacked settlers in Pennsylvania and were responsible for the gruesome murder of a white woman and her baby. Williamson's people captured a group of about 100 Christian Lenape in the village of Gnadenhütten whom hunger had driven from Captive Town to Gnadenhütten. They wanted to bring in the corn harvest from last fall. Williamson suspected the Lenape, mostly women and children, of having supported the enemy warriors and had them killed with a cooper's mallet. The Gnadenhütten massacre had dire effects on the relationship between Indians and whites on the border of the settlement.

Crawford on the stake, by James Boroff (detail)

In the summer of 1782, the Crawford campaign took place, which aimed to destroy the Indian villages on the Sandusky River. The approximately 500 Pennsylvania militia volunteers led by Colonel William Crawford included many participants in the Gnadenhütten massacre. The goal of the campaign was betrayed and Captain Pipe soon knew that the culprits from Gnadenhütten were on their way. In June 1782 the battle of Battle Island broke out. The Americans finally had to give way to the Indian superiority and fled. Crawford and some of his men were captured. Almost all of them were killed in revenge for havens, and Colonel Crawford's execution was particularly gruesome. Captain Pipe publicly accused Crawford of murdering the Christian Indians, although Crawford himself was not present in the sanctuaries, but he was in the Squaw campaign . Captain Pipe personally colored his face black, the sign of his imminent death. He was then tied to the torture stake and tortured for over two hours before they burned him alive. Only two Americans were able to escape, including Dr. John Knight, who later published his experiences, which strained the already bad relations between Americans and Indians even more.

After the war

The disputed area on the Ohio River was officially named Northwest Territory in the 1880s . Even after the American Revolutionary War, Captain Pipe resisted the advance of the white settlers. But he changed his policy after he realized that his people had no chance against the white Americans. Pipe began to negotiate contracts with the American government to secure land for his people.

When the first settlers settled in what is now Marietta , Ohio, in 1788 , Captain Pipe and about 70 Lenape warriors had set up camp nearby. This is also the time when General Josiah Harmar described him as a sturdy old fellow who looked more like a gentleman than most of the people on the outskirts. It is now called Old Pipe by other contemporaries, but according to most reliable sources it was only 48 years old that year. Captain Pipe and his group went hunting for fur animals in the area of ​​the Muskingum River and its tributaries. He exchanged the captured furs for food and other goods to feed his tribe.

Captain Pipe's role in the Little Turtles War is unclear. Some historians claim that part of his Lenape group did not want to follow him into this war. The Little Turtles War began with a series of American defeats when the Americans attacked Indian villages in northwest Ohio. General Josiah Harmar's poorly trained troops were ambushed on the upper Wabash River in 1790 and lost 183 men. On November 4, 1791, General Arthur St. Clair suffered an even greater defeat by Miami and Shawnee under the chiefs Little Turtle and Blue Jacket on a punitive expedition to western Ohio . St. Clair lost a total of 948 dead and wounded in the battle, which is considered to be the most costly battle between the Americans and the Indians. It is said that Captain Pipe later reported on his experiences in this successful battle for the Indians. When the Greenville Peace Treaty was signed in August 1795, he was not one of the chiefs who signed. Apparently he had fallen out of favor with his people through his alliance with Little Turtle. Captain Pipe then moved with some loyal followers to the headwaters of the Mohican River, to the Jerome Fork. From the years 1808 and 1809 there are reports from the settlers that Old Pipe and his group lived in the area of ​​the present day city of Jeromesville on Jerome Fork in Ohio from 1895 to 1812 in a village with the Mohican. In these records he is described as tall, slender and dignified, about 70 years old, in Native American clothing. In the spring of 1812, Captain Pipe and his group moved west to what is now Orestes, Indiana.

The date of death of Captain Pipes is unknown, but presumably he died around 1818 near Orestes and was buried there. However, other sources indicate that he moved to Canada in 1814 and died there. In the same year, Captain Pipe, Killbuck and White Eyes and thirteen other Lenape signed a treaty with the United States. These were obviously sons of the chiefs of the same name. The Treaty of St. Marys of 1818 required the Lenape to move from Indiana to Missouri within three years .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Orestes Indiana History - Captain Pipe ( Memento of the original from July 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

literature

• Francis C. Huebner: Charles Killbuck - An Indian's Story of the Border Wars of the American Revolution. Kessinger Publishing, 2005, ISBN 978-1-4179-0634-5 .
• CA Weslager: The Delaware Indians. New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1972.