George Croghan (c. 1718 – August 31, 1782) was an Irish-born fur trader in the Ohio Country of North America (current United States) who became a key early figure in the region. In 1746 he was appointed to the Onondaga Council, the governing body of the Haudenosaunee, and remained so until he was banished from the frontier in 1777 during the American Revolutionary War.Greenwood, 46. Emigrating from Ireland to Pennsylvania in 1741, he had become an important trader by going to the villages of Indigenous Peoples, learning their languages and customs, and working on the frontier where previously mostly French had been trading. During and after King George's War of the 1740s, he helped negotiate new treaties and alliances for the British with Native Americans.
Croghan was appointed in 1756 as Deputy Indian Agent with chief responsibility for the Ohio region tribes. He assisted Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern District, who was based in New York and had strong alliances with the Haudenosaunee. Beginning in the 1740s and following this appointment, Croghan amassed hundreds of thousands of acres of land in today's western Pennsylvania and New York by official grants and from Native American purchases. Beginning in 1754, he was a rival of George Washington for influence in Ohio Country and remained far more powerful there for more than 20 additional years. During the American Revolutionary War in 1777, he was falsely accused of treason. He was acquitted the following year but patriot authorities did not allow him back in the Ohio territory.
Ohio's recorded history begins with Croghan's actions in the mid-1740s as fur trader, Haudenosaunee royaner, and go-between for Pennsylvania, according to historian Alfred A. Cave. Cave concludes that the treason charge that ended Croghan's career was trumped up by his enemies.Cave, 12 Western Pennsylvania became the focal point in August 1749 when Croghan purchased 200,000 acres from the Haudenosaunee, exclusive of two square miles at the Forks of the Ohio for a British fort.Wainwright, 41 Croghan soon learned that his three deeds would be invalidated if part of Pennsylvania, sabotaged that colony's effort to erect the fort, and led the Ohio Confederation to permit Virginia's Ohio Company to build it and settle the region.Greenwood, 5-7 Late in 1753 Virginia sent George Washington to the Ohio Country, who would eventually end Croghan's influence there.
Braddock's Defeat in 1755 and French control of Ohio Country, which they called the Illinois Country, indicating the area of their greater settlement, found Croghan building forts on the Pennsylvania frontier. Following which he manned the farthest frontier post in present-day New York as Deputy Indian agent under Sir William Johnson, called the "Mohawk Baron" for his extensive landholdings and leadership with the Mohawk and other Haudenosaunee. Croghan briefly lived until 1770 on a quarter of a million New York acres. He resigned as Indian agent in 1771 to establish Vandalia, a fourteenth British colony to include parts of present-day West Virginia, southwestern Pennsylvania, and eastern Kentucky, but continued to serve as a borderland negotiator for Johnson, who died a British loyalist in 1774.
While working to keep the Ohio Indians neutral during the Revolutionary War, Croghan served as Pittsburgh's president judge for Virginia and chairman of its Committee of Safety. General Edward Hand, the local military commander, banished Col. Croghan from the frontier in 1777 on suspicion of treason. Despite his acquittal in a November, 1778 trial, Croghan was not allowed to return to the frontier.Wainwright, 307 His death in 1782, shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War, received little if any notice. Although often quoted by historians, the story of Croghan's 30 years as the pivotal figure in Ohio Country history is only found in the handful of biographies.
Early life and career Little is known of Croghan's early life, including the names of his parents.Wainwright, 3. He was born in Ireland around 1718. The best evidence for Croghan's age is found in the treasonous Filius Gallicae letters, written early in 1756 by an otherwise anonymous author. "France's friend" claimed to be nearly 38 years old, among other self-descriptions that pointed to Croghan, but a secret British investigation exposed the fraud.Wainwright, 107. Croghan testified to his Irish origins in meetings in London in the 1760s. Croghan is a corruption and Anglicization of an older native Irish surname Mac Conchruacha
Apparently Croghan's father died young and his widowed mother married again, to Thomas Ward. Croghan emigrated as a young man from Dublin, Ireland to the province of Pennsylvania in 1741. His mother and step-father, his half-brother Edward Ward, and cousin Thomas Smallman also emigrated, the men working for him in America. Among relatives remaining in Ireland were a merchant, Nicholas Croghan (likely a brother of George);Wainwright, 260 an aunt, Mrs. Smallman; and George's grandfather Edmund Croghan.Wainwright, 207.
Within a few years Croghan became one of Pennsylvania's leading fur traders. A key to his success was establishing trading posts in Native American villages, as the French traders did, and learning their languages and customs. At the time, the usual British practice was to set up a post at a site for their own convenience, generally at a major crossroads, and wait for Native Americans to come to them.Michael J. Mullin, "Croghan, George", American National Biography Online, February 2000. Croghan learned at least two Native languages, Unami (an Algonquian language common to the Lenape of the mid-Atlantic region) and probably Seneca (an Iroquoian language spoken by the westernmost Seneca nation of the Haudenosaunee), whose territory extended into what colonists called Pennsylvania. They also had hunting grounds in the Ohio Valley. These were the languages of the two major nations of Native Americans in the region.
Croghan also learned Native American customs, rapidly adopting the practice of exchanging gifts when he met with the people. He established his first trading base and wintered in a mostly Seneca village at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River on Lake Erie. (This area later developed as Cleveland, Ohio.) During the early years, Croghan's primary business partner was William Trent, also a trader. The son of the founder of Trenton, New Jersey, Trent likely supplied capital to acquire trade goods and set up their business.
Marriages and families Croghan married in the 1740s and had a daughter, Susannah Croghan. He later married again, while serving as Deputy Indian agent to Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District. His second wife was a Mohawk woman, Catherine (Takarihoga), daughter of Mohawk chief Nickus Peters (Karaghaigdatie). Their daughter Catherine (Adonwentishon) Croghan (1759–1837) would assume her mother's hereditary role as head of the Turtle clan. She later was the third wife of Joseph Brant, the prominent Mohawk war leader who led his people during their migration and settlement in Canada on lands granted by the Crown after the American Revolutionary War. Brant's sister Molly was a long-term consort of Sir William Johnson, so Croghan was doubly connected to influential British and Mohawk families in the East. Elizabeth Brant, a daughter of Joseph Brant and Catherine (Adonwentishon) Crogan, married William Johnson Kerr, a grandson of Sir William Johnson and Molly Brant.
King George's War, 1744–1748 Britain's blockade of French ports made the few French trade goods reaching Ohio Country prohibitively expensive; this resulted in a bonanza for the Pennsylvania British traders that alarmed the French. They knew that Native American trade and diplomacy were closely linked, and Croghan's activities from his base on the Cuyahoga River threatened French influence among the regional natives. As Croghan expanded his trading network westward toward Detroit, then held by the French, they encouraged French-allied Native Americans to attack him.
The British trader quickly took advantage of wartime conditions, establishing new posts at the Wyandot village of Sandusky and the Miami village of Pickawillany, tribes that had previously traded with the French.
His partnership with Trent was temporarily suspended when the latter joined the military to serve in King George's War (1744–48). The two men bought property on Conedogwinet Creek in present-day Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Croghan developed a plantation there which served as his home and base of operations from about 1745 until 1751.Wainwright, 8–13.
In April 1745 the Seneca protected Croghan from capture at the village on the Cuyahoga, but elsewhere French-allied Natives robbed a canoe-load of Croghan's furs.Wainwright, 8. Croghan was adopted by the Seneca and in 1746, according to his testimony before the Lords of Trade in 1764, was one of their hereditary sachems among the 50 chiefs comprising the Six Nations' Onondaga Council. Already on it was William Johnson, the future British Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District, Croghan's superior. Their principal French competitor for influence among the Native Americans in the Ohio region was Philippe-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire, son of the French fur trader Louis-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire (1670–1740),Wainwright, 13 another Seneca appointee to the Onondaga Council two decades earlier. That these men were members of the tribes they represented cannot be overemphasized in understanding their roles in American history.
Early in 1747, Seneca and Wyandot warriors murdered five French traders at the Wyandot village of Sandusky. This was the start of a regional Indian revolt against the French fomented by Croghan.Wainwright, 3 The Wyandot chief Nicholas Orontony led it at first. He was followed by Memeskia (or "Old Briton" as Croghan named him),Anderson, 28-29 known by the French as La Demoiselle, who was a Piankeshaw Miami chief.
Unsuccessful in driving out the French, the participating bands became more closely aligned with the British. Reports claimed that Croghan had encouraged the uprising so that the Natives would trade with him and not the French. Old Briton relocated to Pickawillany on the Great Miami River, where Croghan built a stockade and trading post.Wainwright, 14–15.
Aided by local Haudenosaunee chiefs Tanacharison (Half King) and Scarouady sent to oversee the Mingo and dependent Ohio Country nations, Croghan organized the Ohio Confederation of the region's tribes in 1748; they lit a "council fire on the Ohio River, independent of the Six Nations."Aquila,194. Greenwood believes this was Croghan's initiative, as shown by earlier and subsequent events.Greenwood, 3.
At the same time Croghan brought the Miami into an alliance with Great Britain, formalized in a July, 1748 treaty at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Andrew Montour, a conference interpreter, became Croghan's closest associate until his death in 1772. The other interpreter, Conrad Weiser, had been appointed as British Indian agent for Pennsylvania.
Weiser held a conference in August 1748 at Logstown, on the Ohio River near its confluence in today's western Pennsylvania, to inform the recently allied tribes of the Ohio Confederation gathered at their capital that Britain had signed a peace treaty with France ending the war. As a result, the English had no more war supplies for them and he distributed gifts instead. Pennsylvania approved Weiser's recommendation that the colony appoint Croghan as its negotiator with the Ohio Country Indians.Wainwright, 18–21 His success in that role should surprise no one.