Quadruple Alliance

The Quadruple Alliance mentioned by Jacob Johnson in his letter of June 15, 1769, refers to a Shawnee-led confederacy of Ohio Indians, including Delawares, Cherokees and Creeks (historians also mention Mingoes), formed in the wake of the pan-tribal resistance of Pontiac’s war (1763-65). That conflict forced the British to modify some of their draconian policies, but many tribes were enraged by the terms of the Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1768, which gave Britain control of the land south of the Ohio River. Led by the Shawnees, the most powerful of the anti-Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations, warriors gathered each spring at the Scioto River from 1769 until the outbreak of Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774 to encourage and plan resistance to British and Haudenosaunee control of the Ohio River area. This was not the formal name of this ephemeral but powerful confederacy; rather, Johnson is making a comparison to a European alliance of the same name, one of several in Western history, formed in 1718 by Great Britain, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Netherlands to counter Philip V of Spain who sought to nullify the peace agreements reached after the War of the Spanish Succession. The Ohio Indian confederacy stoked fears among white settlers of further violence and disrupted missionary efforts in the Ohio River region where Wheelock was sending his graduates.

Calloway, Colin. The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Dowd, Gregory. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. ”Quadruple Alliance.” Encyclopedia.Com. http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Quadruple_Alliance.aspx.