Peter Chartiers

Peter Chartier (c. 16901759) (Anglicized version of Pierre Chartier, sometimes written Chartiere, Chartiers, Shartee or Shortive) was a fur trader of mixed Shawnee and French parentage. Known in Shawnee as Wacanackshina, he later became a leader and a band chief among the Pekowi Shawnee. As an early advocate for Native American civil rights, he joined other chiefs in opposing the sale and trade of alcohol in indigenous communities in the Province of Pennsylvania. He first tried to limit the sale of rum in Shawnee communities but also expanded that effort to other indigenous peoples.

Because of conflict with the English provincial government, in 1745 he accepted a French commission and left Pennsylvania with his band. Beginning with more than 400 Pekowi Shawnee, he migrated over the next four years through parts of modern Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee. He and his people eventually resettled in the Illinois Country of New France, near a French colonial community. He and some of his warriors later fought on the side of the French against the English during the French and Indian War.

Chartier is memorialized in numerous place names, including communities (Chartiers Township and Chartiers (Pittsburgh)), rivers (including Chartiers Creek and Chartiers Run (Allegheny River tributary)) a daughter of Straight Tail Meaurroway Opessa and his wife, of the Pekowi Shawnee.

Pierre Chartier was born in 1690 at French Lick on the Cumberland River in northeastern Tennessee, near the present-day site of Nashville, Tennessee, where his father ran a trading post.

His mother gave Pierre the Shawnee name of Wacanackshina, meaning "White one who reclines". Historical marker in Washington Boro, Pennsylvania, commemorating the life of Peter Chartier's father, Martin Chartier. Pierre Chartier married his first cousin, Blanceneige-Wapakonee Opessa (1695–1737), daughter of Opessa Straight Tail and his wife, about 1710. They had three children together: François "Pale Croucher" (b. 1712), René "Pale Stalker" (b. 1720), and Anna (b. 1730). In 1717, Governor William Penn granted his father Martin a 300-acre tract of land along the Conestoga River in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. (One source says the grant was for 500 acres. In 1718 they moved to Dekanoagah on Yellow Breeches Creek near the Susquehanna River. Martin Chartier died there in April of that year.

Chartier's father's funeral was attended by James Logan, a future Mayor of Philadelphia. Logan had Peter Chartier (as he was now called) and his family evicted, and also expelled a community of Conestoga who were living on the property. He later sold the property to Stephen Atkinson for 30 pounds.

Career as a trader

Logan permitted Chartier to maintain his trading post on the land as a tenant. Eventually Chartier opened another post at Paxtang on the Susquehanna River. (A 1736 map of Paxtang Manor by surveyor Edward Smout shows the home of Peter Chartier [spelled "Peter Shottea"] in what is today New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. ). Although Chartier eventually became a wealthy landowner, his experience with Logan embittered him. It was one of the reasons he turned against the Provincial Government.

In September and October 1732, Chartier and Cartlidge served as interpreters during a conference in Philadelphia attended by Opakethwa and Opakeita, two Shawnee chiefs, with Thomas Penn, Governor Gordon, and the 72-member Pennsylvania Provincial Council. Also with Chartier and the two chiefs was Quassenung, son of Shawnee chief Kakowatcheky. The minutes of the conference record that both Opakethwa and Quassenung died of smallpox during their visit to Philadelphia. In October 1701 the Pennsylvania Assembly had prohibited the sale of rum to Native American people.

Because the law was poorly enforced in the frontier society, and the penalty was light—a fine of ten pounds and confiscation of any illegal supplies—traders continued to use rum to barter for furs. Traders soon began selling rum on credit in order to extort furs and skins and labor from the Shawnee.

Native American leaders objected to the widespread use of alcohol. The minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania for 16 May 1704 record a complaint submitted by Chief Ortiagh of the Conestoga Indians:

Attempts to control the sale of alcohol On 24 April 1733 the Shawnee chiefs at "Allegania" sent a petition to Governor Gordon complaining that "There is yearly and monthly some new upstart of a trader without license, who comes amongst us and brings with him nothing but rum ..." and asking permission to destroy the casks of rum: "We therefore beg thou would take it into consideration, and send us two firm orders, one for Peter Chartier, the other for us, to break in pieces all the [casks] so brought."

On 1 May 1734 several Shawnee chiefs dictated a letter to a trader, probably Jonah Davenport: it listed the names of fifteen traders who either had no license or had shown undesirable behavior, such as frequent disputes or violence. Chartier was among seven who were listed as in good standing. The chiefs would allow those men to bring up to 60 gallons of rum a year to their communities, as long as they had a valid license. Chartier was described as "one of us, and he is welcome to come as long as he pleases ... [and] to bring what quantity [of rum] he pleases ..." The letter concludes, "And for our parts, if we see any other traders than those we desire amongst us, we will stave their [casks] and seize their goods." He decided to prohibit the sale of rum in Shawnee communities in his area, and persuaded other chiefs to do the same.

In a letter of 20 March 1738, addressed to Thomas Penn and Acting Governor James Logan, three Shawnee chiefs stated:

Chartier and ninety-eight Shawnee signed a pledge that accompanied the letter: it agreed that all rum should be spilled, and four men should be appointed for every town to prevent rum or strong liquor being brought into their towns for four years. Traders continued to take rum into Shawnee communities, including several traders whom the Shawnees had specifically requested be barred from their territory.

For several years the French government had been trying to win the support of indigenous communities as part of their competition with the British in North America. In 1740 the Governor of New France, Charles de la Boische, Marquis de Beauharnois, invited Chartier and other Shawnee leaders to meet in Montreal to discuss relocating to Detroit (then under French control) and forming an alliance. In a letter of 25 June 1740 Chartier declined, promising to visit Montreal the following year (a promise which he apparently did not keep). Several Shawnee communities from the Chalahgawtha, Pekowi and Mekoche bands later resettled near Chartier's Town.

Chartier's flight from Pennsylvania, 1745 Conference between French and Native American leaders around 1750, by Émile Louis Vernier Frustrated in his efforts to control the rum trade, Chartier decided to lead his band away from the area. With some 400 Pekowi Shawnee, he left their settlement and headed southwest.

In July 1745 traders James Dunning (who had been banned by the Shawnee in 1734) and Peter Tostee appeared in Philadelphia. They claimed to authorities that they had been robbed on the frontier on 18 April:

... as they were returning up the Allegheny River in canoes, from a trading trip, with a considerable quantity of furs and skins, Peter Chartier, late an Indian Trader, with about 400 Shawnese Indians, armed with guns, pistols and cutlasses, suddenly took them prisoners, having, as he said, a captain's commission from the King of France; and plundered them of all their effects to the value of sixteen hundred pounds.

The Pennsylvania provincial council issued an indictment against "Peter Chartier of Lancaster County ... Labourer [who], being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil ... falsely, traitorously, unlawfully and treasonably did compass, imagine and intend open war, insurrection and rebellion against our said Lord the King." Chartier's landholdings in Pennsylvania, totaling some 600 acres, were seized and turned over to Thomas Lawrence, a business partner of Edward Shippen, III. Chartier and his people recognized that, by defying the Provincial Governor and accepting French patronage, they had to leave Pennsylvania, which was under British control. In June an anonymous Frenchman visited Lower Shawneetown, sent by Paul-Joseph Le Moyne de Longueuil, commandant at Detroit, to take charge of captives Chartier was presumed to have taken when he robbed traders Dunning and Tostee. Chartier had released the traders after robbing them, however.

The Frenchman observed Chartier trying unsuccessfully to persuade the leaders of Lower Shawneetown to accept French alliance:

This Frenchman watched the Shawnee who had accompanied Chartier performing a two-day "Death Feast," a ceremony conducted before abandoning a village. while others believe that this is probably inaccurate, and that Chartier never actually lived there, although "a band of Shawnee may have established the village in 1750 or 1751 and it may have been abandoned in 1754 due to attacks by the Catawbas." According to Charles Augustus Hanna (1911):

Proceeding southwards along the Catawba Trail, they established a town about a mile west of the oil spring on what was afterwards called Lulbegrud Creek, a northern tributary of the Red River of Kentucky, about twelve miles east of the site of the present town of Winchester, Clark County. led them to move south to the Coosa River in 1748, where they founded the village of Chalakagay, near what is now Sylacauga, Alabama. Black Hoof (1740–1831), then a child, was with this band and recalled the journey in later years when he was a chief.

The Pennsylvania government continued to offer a bounty for Chartier as late as 1747, when James Adair tried to catch him in South Carolina. Adair later wrote: I headed a company of the cheerful, brave Chickasaw, with the eagles' tails, to the camp of the Shawano Indians, to apprehend one Peter Shartie (a Frenchman), who...had decoyed a large body of the Shawano from the English to the French interest. But, fearing the consequences he went round an hundred miles toward the Cheerake nation...and thereby evaded the danger.

Division of Chartier's people, 1748 Chartier's Shawnee band split several times; some remained in Lower Shawneetown.

In July the Pennsylvania Provincial Council appointed a commission to meet with the Shawnee who had returned, and instructed them: As to the Shawonese you are to enquire very exactly after their conduct since the commencement of the War, and what lengths they went in favor of Peter Chartier; where he is; and what he has been doing all this time; and be careful that these people acknowledge their fault in plain terms, and promise never to be guilty of any behaviour again that may give such reason to suspect their fidelity.

Resettlement in Illinois Chartier and about 270 Shawnee left Alabama and moved to French Lick on the Cumberland River in modern-day Tennessee, Chartier's birthplace. They stayed there until fighting with the Chickasaw forced them to leave. According to Lyman C. Draper, the band, then numbering about 190...made their way down Cumberland River, the women, children, aged and disabled men, in canoes, and the warriors as a guard along shore; intending to rejoin their brethren, who were now located on the Ohio, chiefly at the Lower Shawanoe Town, at the mouth of the Scioto; but when they entered the Ohio, the heavy spring flood was rolling down, against which their progress was so slow and tedious, that they stopped a few miles below the mouth of the Wabash, at the present locality of Old Shawneetown, Illinois. Remaining there awhile, the French Traders and Kaskaskia Indians invited them to take up their abode at Kaskaskia.

Death Peter Chartier was last seen in 1758 in a village on the Wabash River. It spread through Native American communities across North America.

Legacy

Historian Richard White characterizes Chartier's rise to power as unique among the Shawnee:

Although the proclamation was more strongly worded than previous ones, it was not strictly enforced. Alcohol abuse continued to be an increasing problem in indigenous communities.

Native American self-determination Historian Stephen Warren describes Peter Chartier as an "audacious example of independence [which] infuriated Englishmen and Frenchmen alike," saying that Chartier

Warren argues that both Peter and his French father, Martin Chartier, influenced Shawnee attitudes toward their neighbors and rivals, both European and Native American: