P
1768The Iroquois cede Shawnee land in the
Treaty of Fort Stanwix.
The British compel the Iroquois to grant them a
large tract of land stretching from the Ohio River
to what is now northern Kentucky. The treaty rep-
resents the first major cession of land west of the
Appalachians since the Proclamation of 1763 (see
entry for OCTOBER 7, 1763), which reserved the
region exclusively for Indian use. The area sold by
the Iroquois encompasses much of the traditional
homeland of the Shawnee. Furious that the Iroquois
have dared to cede their territory, the Shawnee will
soon band together with their Lenni Lenape (Dela-
ware) and Miami allies to resist English efforts to
take over their land.
1769Dartmouth College is established as a
school for Indians.
Through a charter granted to Congregational
minister Eleazer Wheelock, Dartmouth College
is founded in Hanover, New Hampshire, “for the
education and instruction of Youth of the Indian
Tribes in this Land in reading, writing and all parts
of Learning.” Wheelock moves Moor’s Indian
Charity School (see entry for 1754) to Dartmouth
and uses funds collected in England by his protégé,
Mohegan minister Samson Occom (see entries for
1772 and for NOVEMBER 1785), to finance several
of the college’s first buildings. Despite its early com-
mitment to Indian education, Dartmouth will soon
concentrate on teaching English students. Only
nine Indians will graduate from the college over the
following 200 years.
Junípero Serra founds the first California
mission.
A Spanish expedition of soldiers headed by Gas-
par de Portolá and Franciscan missionaries led by
Junípero Serra travels north into Alta California,
where Serra establishes San Diego de Alcalá—a
Catholic mission at the site of present-day San
Diego. The mission is intended to be a military
base, from which the Spaniards can protect their
land claims from other Europeans, and a center
for the conversion of Indians. Over the next 55
years, 17 more missions will be founded in Cali-
fornia on the model of San Diego.
The missions will have a devastating effect on
the Indians of California. Indians brought to the
missions as neophytes—the mission priests’ term
for converts—are subjected to Spanish rule and
routinely punished with beatings for any infraction.
Such brutal punishments, coupled with widespread
starvation and disease caused by bad sanitation, will
lead to the deaths of thousands of Mission Indians.
(See also entries for 1834 and 1985.)“The following day after my bap-
tism, they took me to work with
other Indians, and they put me
to cleaning a [field] of maize.... I
cut my foot and could not con-
tinue working.... Every day they
lashed me... because I could not
finish... I found a way to escape;
but I was tracked and they caught
me like a fox.... They lashed me
until I lost consciousness.... For
several days I could not raise
myself from the floor where
they had laid me.”
—Kamia Indian Janitin
on his treatment at the
San Diego missionApril 20Pontiac is killed by a Peoria assassin.
The great Ottawa rebellion leader Pontiac (see entry
for MAY 9, 1763) is living among the Illinois Indians