This Day in Presidential History (Washington, JQ Adams Meet Chickasaws at Philly White House)

July 11, 1794—As he celebrated his birthday, 27-year-old John Quincy Adams did not carry on like a party animal, the way people before and after him were wont to do. Instead, the future President of the United States received an impromptu lesson on how to conduct oneself in office from the current occupant, George Washington.

This date was not a special hinge moment in American history, if you want to know the truth. But more days than not are like that in the Presidency.

That’s not to say, though, that nothing much was going on. For students in American history, this day holds its own kind of interest, from these standpoints:

* Relations with Native Americans. The noontime meeting at the President’s House in Philadelphia between Washington and members of the Chickasaw tribe represented an important attempt by a longtime Indian fighter to resolve a problem that would plague virtually every Chief Executive for the next century—how to balance Indian rights and white encroachment.

* A study in Washington’s character. His actions on this day showed how “The Father of His Country”—a man who, it is generally believed, was sterile—had an eye for talented young men whom he could mentor. They also displayed why he was so careful to manage his appearance.

* The education of John Quincy Adams on requirements of higher office. The young man’s father, John Adams, had prepared him, with Puritan relentlessness, for the intellectual demands of public life. But Washington’s Vice President was not in a position where he could school him in how to act with self-discipline in affairs of high state. Washington was, and did.

* The paradoxes of cross-cultural goodwill and misunderstanding. Washington wanted to do everything he could to maintain peace with the Indians—who he knew, from service in the French and Indian War as well as in the American Revolution, inevitably became pawns in the conflicts among old European and new American powers. But a key symbolic moment at the meeting—the kind that Washington, with his passion for theater, normally executed flawlessly—turned out to be an occasion for head-scratching.

Back in 1755, Washington received an important lesson in asymmetrical warfare when he saw the perfectly trained British troops under the command of Gen. Edward Braddock ambushed on the Monongahela River by the French and their Indian allies. In 1779, now commander-in-chief of American forces in the revolution, he ordered one-quarter of his entire undermanned army, under John Sullivan and James Clinton, to carry out the largest military campaign ever mounted against native North Americans—specifically, Iroquois who either actively sided with the British, or were even neutral in the conflict.

But as the ultimate realist of the revolution, Washington believed in neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies. If the new nation was to prosper, its people had to live in security with the estimated 75,000 Native Americans living on the other side of the Alleghenies—including the approximately 20,000 warriors among them. To this end, he hoped to make peace with the Indians.

In some ways, Washington had more room to maneuver here than there was on another delicate issue involving non-whites: slavery. The President and his Secretary of War, Henry Knox, settled on a policy that treated the Indians as members of foreign nations, subject to treaties that would be maintained by the force of federal policy over the states.

The Chickasaws sought American help to ward off attacks made against them by the Creek Indians. The President was prepared to help any country that helped Americans, so he invited important Chickasaw dignitaries to meet with him in the President’s temporary mansion in the nation’s temporary capital of Philadelphia.

The President felt the effort to secure Chickasaw help was so necessary that he ignored a balky balk—as noted by biographer James Thomas Flexner, “the first injury he had in his long and dangerous career ever suffered.” He knew from past experience that Native Americans scorned lame warriors. So he determined to grit his false teeth and sit up straight.

Just as he was grateful to the Chickasaw for any peacemaking efforts, he also felt grateful to the young John Quincy Adams for supporting the administration at a time when it was being heavily attacked by the Democratic-Republicans. During the Revolution, Washington had learned how to spot and promote younger, able men such as Nathaniel Greene and Alexander Hamilton.

Sensing another such man, and knowing both his familiarity with Holland and fluency in the Dutch language (both of which the young man had learned while traveling with his diplomat father in the revolution), Washington appointed Adams minister to the Netherlands. He invited his new appointee first to dine, then to the welcoming ceremony for the Chickasaw the next day.

If you’re a young man, you’d think, your mind might run riot with booze and women. JQA wasn’t buying that—he’d leave those practices to brothers Charles and Thomas Bolyston Adams, both of whom would lead blighted lives because of their addictions.

So young Adams showed up for the luncheon. We owe to his diary (which he maintained assiduously for much of his long career, about as much as he maintained his penchants for morning walks and skinny-dipping in the Potomac) most of what we know about this event—including the consternation caused among the Chickasaw when the President passed along a peace pipe:

“These Indians appeared to be quite unused to it, and from their manner of going through it, looked as if they were submitting to a process in compliance with our custom.”

What was going on? Chickasaw tribal historian Richard Green has an excellent account of the event that outlines the clashing perspectives of the two would-be allies.

The Chickasaw, like most Native Americans, used clay or stone hand-held peace pipes. Washington must have really wanted to impress his visitors, because this one was of "East Indian" (Adams’ words) origin, made of leather and was 12 to 15 feet in length. Heck, they could practically have a hernia just trying to lift the thing!

You can imagine how the Chickasaw felt. Adams noted that their expressions reflected “novelty,” “frivolity,” a sense of the “ridiculous.”

The Americans mirrored the astonishment felt by their visitors, but on a different matter. Washington and Adams were facing a truly motley crew—a mix of full- and mixed-blood tribe members, some dressed in "coarse jackets and trowsers, and some in the uniform of the United States." (The visitors undoubtedly wanted to demonstrate loyalty to their hosts.) Some wore shirts, others none.

Washington made a brief speech with some specific offers thrown in to cement the friendship between the Americans and the Chickasaw:

* Arranging for accommodations in New York City if they wanted to continue their journey;

* Educating younger tribe members; and

* Defraying expenses “on a liberal scale” if they linked arms with the Americans against Spanish or British interlopers in the Northwest.

And, in a custom that continues to this day, Washington had gifts for his visitors: either $600 or $1,000 (that's $12,000 to $20,000 in today's money) to their chief, Piomingo; clothing and boots for everyone; and presents for families and for persons named by Piomingo but who were not present.

But this was the best: Each Chickasaw received $30 to use for purchases in Philadelphia stores. (Too bad Wanamakers wasn’t around then!)

The Chickasaw wanted something a bit more from the Americans—actual language spelling out treaty obligations. The President was happy to oblige. If only subsequent events were a match for his good intentions…

Earlier in his administration, Washington had to overcome attempts from within his own Cabinet, from Thomas Jefferson—reflecting trans-Allegheny frontiersmen—warning against launching land-fraud allegations against whites encroaching on Native-American land. The Georgia legislature sold 15 million acres to brazen speculators calling themselves the Yazoo Co. Unrest flared in the Northwest, with Washington eventually forced to send Gen. Anthony Wayne out to quell the tribes, which he did at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

Washington groaned at what Indians could expect at the hands of his unscrupulous fellow countrymen: “I believe scarcely any thing short of a Chinese wall will restrain Land jobbers and the encroachment of settlers upon the Indian country.” After his death, matters would grow far worse, when Jefferson would double the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase, gaining an area filled with even more Native Americans, and Andrew Jackson would push the Cherokee west of the Mississippi.

One happy outgrowth of these days in Philadelphia, however, was Washington’s growing confidence in his new diplomat. When John Adams succeeded him three years later, Washington was pretty careful about not interfering with his successor, but he gave some advice that must have made Adams senior proud.

Don’t be afraid of charges of nepotism, Washington told John Adams: his son would “prove himself to be the ablest of all in the Diplomatic Corps.” And so it turned out to be, as John Quincy Adams was launched on a career that would make him America’s greatest Secretary of State—though not, unfortunately, a great President.