Conrad Weiser (November 2, 1696 – July 13, 1760), born Johann Conrad Weiser, Jr., was a Pennsylvania German pioneer who served as an interpreter and diplomat between the Pennsylvania Colony and Native American nations. Primarily a farmer, he also worked as a tanner, and later served as a soldier and judge. He lived part of the time for six years at Ephrata Cloister, a Protestant monastic community in Lancaster County.
As an emissary in councils between Native Americans and the colonies, especially Pennsylvania, during the late 18th century's tensions of the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), he contributed to alliances that supported the British effort.Sylvester, Joe. "Historians take issue with Penn's tavern lore." The Daily Item (Sunbury, Pennsylvania), 29 October 2015.
Early years Conrad Weiser was born in 1696 in the small village of Affstätt in Herrenberg, in the Duchy of Württemberg (now in Baden-Württemberg, Germany), where his father (Johann Conrad Weiser Sr.) was stationed as a member of the Württemberg Blue Dragoons. Soon after Conrad's birth, his father was discharged from the Blue Dragoons and moved back to the family ancestral home of Großaspach. In 1709 the boy's mother, Anna Magdalena, died of fever. Their lands had been ravaged by repeated French invasions, there was pestilence, and the people were weakened by an unusually cold and long winter. Conrad Weiser Sr. wrote for his children, "Buried beside Her Ancestors, she was a god-fearing woman and much loved by Her neighbors. Her motto was Jesus I live for thee, I die for thee, thine am I in life and death."Paul A. W. Wallace, Conrad Weiser, 1696-1760, Friend of Colonist and Mohawk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945. Reprinted Wennawoods, 2001,
Conrad Weiser and his family were among thousands of refugees who left German lands that year, many of them from the Palatine area. They traveled down the Rhine River and then to England, which had offered some support for the Protestant refugees. Thousands of Palatine German refugees made their way to London seeking escape from the harsh conditions; there were so many that the English had to make a camp for them outside the London walls for the winter. The following year in 1710, the Crown (under Queen Anne) arranged for transport in ten ships of the nearly 3,000 Germans to the New York colony. The Crown supported migration of the immigrants to help settle the New York colony. The plan was that they would work off their passage in a form of indenture in camps devoted to producing ships' stores, such as tar and other materials. Later they would be allowed to trade their work for land. Most of the Germans were first located in what were called the East and West Camps along the Hudson River, near Livingston Manor. It was not until 1723 that some 100 heads of families received land grants in the central Mohawk Valley, under Governor Burnetsfield.
Weiser senior moved his family to the Schoharie Valley, south of the Mohawk River, earlier than that. When Conrad was 16, his father agreed to a chief's proposal for the youth to live with the Mohawk in the upper Schoharie Valley. During his stay in the winter and spring of 1712–1713, Weiser learned much about the Mohawk language and the customs of the people, who were the easternmost nation of the Haudenosaunee League. He endured hardships of cold, hunger, and homesickness. Weiser returned to his own people toward the end of July 1713.
On November 22, 1720, at the age of 24, Weiser married Anna Eve Feck, a daughter of Johan Peter Feg and Anna Maria Risch. (Anna Eve Feck was born January 25, 1705, in Schoharie County, New York, and died June 11, 1781, in Womelsdorf, Berks County, Pennsylvania.) In 1729 the couple followed the Susquehanna River south out of New York and settled their young family on a farm in Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania near present-day Reading. The couple had fourteen children, of whom only seven reached adulthood.
Service
Weiser's colonial service began in 1731. The Haudenosaunee sent Shikellamy, an Oneida chief, as an emissary to other tribes and the British. Shikellamy lived on the Susquehanna River at Shamokin village, near present-day Sunbury, Pennsylvania. An oral tradition holds that Weiser met Shikellamy while hunting. In any case, the two became friends. When Shikellamy traveled to Philadelphia for a council with representatives of the province of Pennsylvania, he brought Weiser with him. The Oneida chief trusted him and considered him an adopted son of the Mohawk. Weiser impressed the Pennsylvania governor and council, which thereafter depended on his services as an interpreter. Weiser also interpreted in a follow-up council in Philadelphia in August, 1732.
During the treaty in Philadelphia of 1736, Shikellamy, Weiser, and the Pennsylvanians negotiated a deed whereby the Haudenosaunee sold the land drained by the Delaware River and south of the Blue Mountain. Since the Haudenosaunee had not until then laid claim to this land, Pennsylvania's agreement to purchase from them represented a significant change in the colony's policy toward the Native Americans. William Penn, who had died in 1718, had never taken sides in disputes between tribes. By this formal purchase, the Pennsylvanians were favoring the Haudenosaunee over the claims of the Lenape (whom the English called the Delaware after the river they named after a lord) for the same land. Along with the Walking Purchase of the following year, this treaty (entered into by Penn's sons) exacerbated Pennsylvania-Lenape relations. The Lenape became disenchanted with the English colonials as a result; during the French and Indian Wars, they sided with the French and took part in armed actions against the colonists, causing many deaths. Penn's purchase persuaded the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee to continue to side with the British over the French in that war. Also, by that time the Haudenosaunee nations had more trading relationships with the English in New York and Pennsylvania than they did the French, who were based further north.
During the winter of 1737, beginning February 27, Weiser was commissioned by Virginia Governor William Gooch to attempt to broker a peace between southern tribes and the Haudenosaunee. Some of the latter tribes had been hunting in the Shenandoah Valley. Weiser and his German companion, Stoffel Stump, had to survive high snow, freezing temperatures, and starvation rations to make the six-week journey in winter to the Haudenosaunee capital at Onondaga, in upstate New York near present-day Syracuse. Weiser persuaded the Haudenosaunee not to send any war parties south in the spring, but failed to convince them to send emissaries to parlay with the southern tribes. Impressed with his fortitude, the Haudenosaunee named Weiser Tarachiawagon (Holder of the Heavens). The colonists feared that spill-over violence from conflicts between the Haudenosaunee and southern tribes, such as the Catawba, would have drawn first Virginia, and then Pennsylvania, into conflict with the Haudenosaunee. Therefore, this peace-brokering had a profound effect on Native American/colonial relations.
In 1742, Weiser interpreted at a treaty meeting between the Haudenosaunee and English colonials at Philadelphia, when they were paid for the land purchased in 1736. During this council, the Onondaga chief Canasatego castigated the Lenape/Delawares for engaging in independent land sales. He ordered them to remove their settlements to either Wyoming (Wyomissing) or Shamokin village. The Lenape began to migrate to the Ohio Valley to escape the Haudenosaunee and English colonial pressures; that migration had begun as early as the 1720s. There, they were positioned to trade with the French. At the same time, they launched raids as far east as the Susquehanna River during the French and Indian Wars.
In June 1743, following conflict between Haudenosaunee warriors and the Virginia militia at the Battle of Galudoghson, Weiser was sent by Governor Gooch to Onondaga to meet with the Haudenosaunee leaders. The governor sent £100 worth of goods with Weiser as a peace offering. The battle was one of the motivating factors that led colonial authorities to negotiate the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster.
In 1744, Weiser acted as the interpreter for the Treaty of Lancaster, which was agreed to by representatives of the Haudenosaunee and the colonies of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. During the final day of the treaty council, on July 4, Canasatego spoke about the Haudenosaunee concepts of political unity:
Our wise forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations. This has made us formidable; this has given us great Weight and Authority with our neighboring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy; and by your observing the same methods, our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire such Strength and power. Therefore whatever befalls you, never fall out with one another.
Benjamin Franklin printed this speech, which some historians believe influenced development of American concepts of political unity.
After the Treaty of Lancaster, Virginia and Pennsylvania colonial officials acted as if the Haudenosaunee had sold them settlement rights to the Ohio Valley, but the Haudenosaunee did not believe they had done so. In 1748, Pennsylvania sent Conrad Weiser to Logstown, a council and trade village on the Ohio River. Here he held council with chiefs representing 10 indigenous groups, including the Lenape, Shawnee, and the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee. He arrived at a treaty of friendship between Pennsylvania and these tribes. Threatened by this development and the continued activity of British traders in the Ohio Valley, the French redoubled their diplomatic efforts. In addition, they began to build a string of forts to protect their interests, culminating in Fort Duquesne in 1754 at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, forming the Ohio River. This is where present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania later developed.
In 1750, Weiser traveled again to Onondaga, where he found the political dynamics in the Six Nations had shifted. Canasatego, always pro-British, had died. Some Haudenosaunee nations were leaning toward the French, although the Mohawk remained pro-British. They had extensive trade relations with the British in Albany and eastern province of New York.
Early in the summer of 1754, on the eve of the eruption in the colonies of tensions from the Seven Years' War, called the French and Indian War in North America, Weiser was a member of a Pennsylvania delegation to Albany. The English government had called the meeting, hoping to win assurances of Haudenosaunee support in the looming war with the French. The Haudenosaunee and seven colonies sent representatives. Because of divisions within both the British and Native American ranks, the council did not result in the treaty of support which the crown desired. Instead, each colony made the best deal it could with individual Haudenosaunee leaders. Not only did no single person speak for the Haudenosaunee League, but bands in each nation acted in decentralized ways in this and other wars. No single chief represented any nation when it was at war.
Conrad Weiser negotiated one of the more successful agreements. Some lower-level chiefs deeded to the colony most of the land remaining in present-day Pennsylvania, including the southwestern part that Virginia was also still claiming.