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CXLVI: TO MRS. DEBORAH FRANKLIN - Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. III Letters and Misc. Writings 1753-1763 [1904]

Edition used:

The Works of Benjamin Franklin, including the Private as well as the Official and Scientific Correspondence, together with the Unmutilated and Correct Version of the Autobiography, compiled and edited by John Bigelow (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904). The Federal Edition in 12 volumes. Vol. III (Letters and Misc. Writings 1753-1763).

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CXLVI

TO MRS. DEBORAH FRANKLIN

Easton, 13 November, 1756.

My Dear Child:—

I wrote to you a few days since by a special messenger, and enclosed letters for all our wives and sweethearts; expecting to hear from you by his return, and to have the northern newspapers and English letters per the packet; but he is just now returned without a scrap for poor us. So I had a good mind not to write to you by this opportunity; but I never can be ill natured enough even when there is the most occasion. The messenger says he left the letters at your house, and saw you afterwards at Mr. Duché’s, and told you when he would go, and that he lodged at Honey’s, next door to you, and yet you did not write; so let Goody Smith give one more just judgment, and say what should be done to you. I think I won’t tell you that we are well, nor that we expect to return about the middle of the week, nor will I send you a word of news; that ’s poz.

My duty to mother, love to the children, and to Miss Betsey and Gracy, &c., &c. I am your loving husband,

B. Franklin.

P. S.—I have scratched out the loving words, being writ in haste by mistake, when I forgot I was angry.1

[1 ]When the above letter was written, the author was at Easton, in Pennsylvania, attending a conference with the Indians. The successes of the French on the frontiers, and the disasters which followed Braddock’s defeat, had excited the Indians to hostilities, and murders and other outrages had been committed by them even in the heart of the province. To counteract the influence of the French and bring the Indians to a better temper, it was deemed expedient to hold an amicable conference with some of their chiefs. Governor Denny was present in person, and also William Logan and Richard Peters, on the part of the Council, and Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Fox, William Masters, and John Hughes, as delegates from the Assembly. The conference was opened at Easton on the 8th of November. Teedyuscung, a king of the Delawares, residing at Wyoming, was the principal speaker for the Indians. He explained the reasons of the recent hostilities, but said he was now at peace, and wished to remain so. He promised to return all the prisoners, and demanded that the Indians who had been taken should likewise be sent back to him. He also complained of wrongs which he had suffered.

“I do not want,” said he, “to compel any of the Indians to return or to stay against their will. If they are inclined to stay and live among the English, I am quite willing they should go back again; but I want that they should come and see me, that thereby I may convince their relations and the other nations afar off, that they are not servants, but free people.

“The kings of England and France,” he added, “have settled or wrought this land so as to coop us up, as if in a pen. This very ground that is under me” (striking it with his foot) “was my land and inheritance, and was taken from me by fraud, when I say this ground, I mean all the land lying between Tohiccon Creek and Wyoming on the River Susquehanna. The Proprietaries, who have purchased their lands from us cheap, have sold them too dear to poor people, and the Indians have suffered for it. It would have been more prudent for the Proprietaries to sell the lands cheaper, and to have given it in charge to the people, who bought from them, to use the Indians with kindness on that account.”

The governor asked him what he meant by fraud.

Teedyuscung replied: “When one man had formerly liberty to purchase lands, and he took the deeds from the Indians for it, and then died, after his death, the children forge the deed for the true one, with the same Indian names to it, and thereby take lands from the Indians which they never sold: this is fraud. Also, when one king has land beyond the river, and another king has land on this side, both bounded by rivers, mountains, and springs, which cannot be moved, and the Proprietaries, greedy to purchase lands, buy of one king what belongs to another, this is likewise fraud.

“All the land extending from Tohiccon Creek, over the great mountain to Wyoming, has been taken from me by fraud, for, when I had agreed to sell the land to the old Proprietary by the course of the river, the young Proprietaries came, and got it run by a straight course by the compass, and by that means took in double the quantity intended to be sold.”

Though these charges were not allowed to be correct, yet the commissioners thought it advisable to put an end to the complaints of the Indians by satisfying their claims, and they offered to Teedyuscung a suitable compensation. He declined accepting it on the ground that other tribes besides his own were concerned and must be consulted, and concluded by saying that in the spring he would bring them together for another treaty.

The manuscript minutes of this singular conference have been preserved in the archives of the American Philosophical Society. The commissioners, who attended the conference on the part of the Assembly, were not satisfied with the manner in which the minutes were reported to that body by the governor, and they signed jointly an explanatory paper, which was probably drawn up by Franklin, and which is printed in the Votes and Proceedings of the Assembly, under the date of January 29, 1757.—Sparks.