Beschreibung:

Autograph Letter Signed. 1 pg.+stampless address leaf. To Gasper [Jasper] Yates, Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Carried by Mr. Hoge). Writing about a legal matter, Redick, who had been a Pennsylvania “Commissioner of Indian Affairs” adds the prediction that six years after the end of war with the British, conflict with the Indians in the North West Territory was still to be resolved: “The last accounts from Muskingum” – an Ohio peace conference with the Indians then in progress - “is something favorable, but still I am not by any means sanguine in my expectations on the subject of Indian affairs. It is not improbable in my opinion that a war will produce the first established peace with these people.” One week after Redick’s letter, a peace treaty was signed in Ohio between representatives of the Iroquois and other tribes, united in a “Northwest Confederacy”, and the American Governor of the Northwest Territory. But that agreement did not appease the aggrieved Indians and a “rash of violent confrontations along the frontier between settlers and Indians ensued, leading, as Redick foresaw, to what has been called the first United States war with Native American Indians, which would continue for six years and see thousands killed. The War did not, however, “produce the first established peace” with “those people” except in the sense that it was the start of a century of conflict and oppression that would ultimately end in Indian defeat. Redick was an Irish immigrant, a surveyor and lawyer who rose to political prominence as an anti-Federalist “radical”. He had been a Pennsylvania Commissioner of Indian Affairs since the start of the Revolution and, elected to the state legislature, was considered something of an expert on relations with the Indians - of critical importance to Pennsylvanians who considered the Northwest Territory to be their virtual backyard. He later played an important role in defeat of the Whiskey Rebellion, personally presenting the document of rebel surrender in that near-civil war to President Washington. Jasper Yates, to whom he wrote this letter, has also been an Indian Affairs Commissioner during the Revolutionary War, as well as a Militia Captain who fought the natives in frontier clashes, and, like Redick, he later helped negotiate an end to the Whiskey Rebellion – although his politics were staunchly Federalist.