April 17

[In this letter, dated April 17, 1791, I am writing from Philadelphia to General George Washington to report on a cabinet consultation regarding General Henry Knox's anxieties that the Six Nations might join our hostile native adversaries in the Northwest Territory. Written during a period of escalating frontier warfare, I endorse a diplomatic mission by Timothy Pickering to secure their neutrality with immediate gifts, candidly stating my hope that we shall give the hostile Indians a thorough drubbing this summer before pivoting to a cheaper, more humane strategy of systematic gift-giving to save future bloodshed. Furthermore, I detail my efforts to use James Madison to covertly confront the British agent, Colonel Beckwith, over the illicit British practice of supplying arms and ammunition to our enemies under the thin guise of innocent peacetime presents. My diplomacy was often backed by force.]

General Knox expressed an apprehension that the Six Nations might be induced to join our enemies, there being some suspicious circumstances; and he wished to send Colonel Pickering to confirm them in their neutrality. This, he observed, would occasion an expense of about two thousand dollars, as the Indians were never to be met empty handed. We thought the mission advisable. As to myself, I hope we shall give the Indians a thorough drubbing this summer, and I should think it better afterwards to take up the plan of liberal and repeated presents to them. This would be much the cheapest in the end, and would save all the blood which is now spilt: in time, too, it would produce a spirit of peace and friendship between us. The expense of a single expedition would last very long for presents. I mentioned to the gentlemen, the idea of suggesting through Colonel Beckwith our knowledge of the conduct of the British officers in furnishing the Indians with arms and ammunition, and our dissatisfaction.

Colonel Hamilton said that Beckwith had been with him on the subject, and had assured him they had given them nothing more than the annual presents, and at the annual period. It was thought proper, however, that he should be made sensible that this had attracted the notice of government. I thought it the more material, lest, having been himself the first to speak of it, he might suppose his excuses satisfactory, and that therefore they might repeat the annual present this year. As Beckwith lodges in the same house with Mr. Madison, I have desired the latter to find some occasion of representing to Beckwith that, though an annual present of arms and ammunition be an innocent thing in time of peace, it is not so in time of war; that it is contrary to the laws of neutrality for a neutral power to furnish military implements to either party at war, and that if their subjects should do it on private account, such furniture might be seized as contraband: to reason with him on the subject, as from himself, but so as to let him see that government thought as himself did.