Edward Randolph Quotes
Some believe there have been vagrant and jesuiticall priests, who have made it their businesse, for some yeares past, to go from Sachim to Sachim, to exasperate the Indians against the English and to bring them into a confederacy, and that they were promised supplies from France and other parts to extirpate the English nation out of the continent of America.
Edward Randolph, ~1632-1703, Emissary of King James II, sent to colonies to investigate the overall state of colonial affairs, especially in New England, Report, 1685
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Clinton was a founder of the society and considered an excellent historian. When giving this presentation he had documentation and academic references for each of the statements.
At the time, the traders were mostly French who traded all kinds of goods and especially alcohol—usually rum—for fur animal pelts. Many of the Indians were partial to the French and French oriented traders who did not covet their land and would provide the Indians with alcohol and guns, lead and powder while English traders sometimes tried to restrict these items. Many tribes of American Indians are genetically very susceptible to alcohol—both in terms of immediate impairment—getting drunk and in developing a dependency on having alcohol—addiction or alcoholism.
Even at this early time, it was clear that whites had brought numerous diseases that decimated the Indians. Alcohol and disease killed many more native Americans than all the wars—intertribal and with the whites—ever did. Neolin warned but did not have more than regional influence.
The Indian allies of the French scalped some American colonists which for some whites was akin to the modern reaction to terrorist atrocities. The British and Americans then justified the scalping of their Indian allies as simple retaliation. While Indians had scalped before the whites ever came, the whites accelerated the practice. There was an economic element to scalping. The French “paid” their Indian allies in arms, blankets, trinkets and alcohol by the scalp as it was a crude way of “performance measurement.” Not to be outdone, the English adopted the same custom with the French allied Indians as targets. In North Carolina, for example, the “volunteer” rangers were paid the enormous rate of 10 pounds a scalp.
Christian Neophytes were Indians who claimed that they had converted to Christianity. The French initially banned giving or selling firearms to the Indians of North America. However in 1640, they made an exception to provide arms to the Huron Indians who they thought had converted to Christianity. Four years later the Jesuits were using guns as the major motivation for conversion of Indians. The hypocrisy of using weapons of war to attract converts to a religion of peace gave way to the incredible success that the trading of guns for souls had achieved. The French military also thought that the armed Indians could be used as allies in the coming battle with England for control of North America. The English then armed their Indian allies, and the French and Indian Wars saw armed Indians on both sides.
The French had launched a sneak attack on the English settlement at Schenectady, NY. The English had not provided enough security to Schenectady and now considered withdrawing from the upstate area. Contrary to the popular conception of all the Indians being invaded by the Whites and fighting it, here these Indians were urging the English to hang on and stay in the area. The Mohawk were one of the tribes of the Iroquois confederation which were very sophisticated, somewhat democratice, and very powerful economically and militarily. To them, the English were good trading partners and unlike the French tended to conform with Iroquis norms, rules and mores. It also illustrated the closeness of the alliance of these Indians with the English against the French in the French & Indian Wars.
Marquis de Seignelay. This shows that the concept of ethnic cleansing has been around for some time. The only thing that prevented the French from implementing the plan was that they couldn’t defeat the Iroquois. There is a certain irony here in that the Iroquois were very much allied with the British even during the American Revolution. After that war, the Iroquois were run out of their traditional lands, not by the French but by the Americans. And where did they go and resettle? Up to then British Canada, the very area where the French so feared them.
While the official battles of the American Revolution did not begin until 1776, parts of the American colonies were in a de facto state of rebellion and the British could not enforce their laws. See {636925} for another of the King’s statements.
This quotation is an excellent example of the early, militant Gandhi. It is typical of militant theocracies of the Islamic world today.
The rationale for paying these Indians was given in the beginning of the treaty. See {612283}. In addition the treaty provided for the Federal government to build a flour mill and a saw mill and provide technical staff to operate and maintain them. In an interesting gesture the Federal government rebuilt a church that had been the house of worship for some Oneida Presbyterians. The English and the other Iroquois had burned the church to the ground. See {621968}. This is one of the few times in history, and certainly the first time, that the Federal government constructed a church for a particular sect. The other tribes of the Iroquois nation had allied themselves with the English. See {583726}. Only the Oneida joined the colonist cause. At the end of the war, the other Iroquois tribes were run out of the country and they escaped to Canada. The Oneida, in contrast, were rewarded by the Federal government and integrated into New York State society.
The French had a much different agenda in the new world than the British who wanted to create residential colonies. The French were more interested in trade—not in establishing permanent colonies. The result was that the French were in many ways better trading partners for the Indians than the English. They came without women, intermarried among the Indians and learned the languages; they did not contest for land, and they paid the Indians more for pelts and furs than the English were willing to. At the same time they exacerbated conflicts with the colonists, and encouraged Indian attacks on settlers as that kept competition out. They were not above giving Indians alcohol and encouraging them to rob the furs and/or kill their English competitors. So on two levels, they had to be removed. See the military view of Robert Rogers: {614122}.
Edward Randolph, sometimes referred to as Edward Randolph of Bremo, was a ship captain, a London tobacco merchant, and the seventh and youngest son of William Randolph and Mary Isham.
