Tea Sets and Tyranny. Steven C. Bullock
he explained in a 1708 letter, chose their allies in large part based on trade, generally aligning themselves with the European trading partners that “sell them the best pennyworths.” Though the French had offered substantial presents to gain the favor of the Chickasaw, he noted, the group had maintained their loyalties to Carolina because of its “much beter trade.”34
Despite its importance, however, the Indian trade that contributed so much to Carolina’s economy and its security was not committed to the hands of self-denying missionaries or seasoned diplomats seeking the broader public good. Instead, the colony’s commerce was carried out by a somewhat less reassuring group of one or two hundred traders. These men, who generally worked for wealthy Charles Town merchants and planters, could be thoughtful and responsible. Thomas Welch advised the legislature on dealing with the French in 1707 and then accompanied Nairne on the outward-bound leg of his journey. He then headed even farther west to the nations along the Mississippi. But many traders richly deserved their reputation for disreputable behavior. As Nairne noted in 1708, their actions “hath been much and long complained of.” Traders defied Carolina’s authority, refusing to take out the licenses required by the trade reform act, pretending not to have seen governor’s orders when they were inconvenient, and even tearing up official notices after they were served.35
Traders were no more respectful to Indians. Even though they lived in Native villages for much of the year, establishing themselves by taking an Indian mistress and thereby claiming membership in family, village, and clan, they often refused to accept community expectations. The Board of Commissioners established by the trade act heard numerous cases against traders, including such misdeeds as taking “a young Indian against her Will for his Wife” and attacking an Indian he suspected of involvement with his sexual partner. After John Frazer had been accused of attacking a town’s leader, another trader called in to testify noted that it was common knowledge that Frazier “was apt to beat and abuse the Indians.”36
Traders also challenged the accepted standards of the slave trade. Customary Native practices such as the sorting of captives during the first several days after the return of a war party or the institution of a peace chief who discouraged fighting often seemed only barriers to further profits. Traders provided guns, ammunition, and encouragement for raids in return for a portion of the captives (and the right to sell the others). Less scrupulous traders even sponsored attacks on Carolina’s allies. The trader James Child arranged an attack on friendly Cherokee villages in 1706, an action that deeply troubled legislators and spurred the desire for reform. Nairne called Child’s actions “kidnapping.”37
The office of agent created by the Indian Trade Act passed the next year responded to these concerns. His job, Nairne explained a year later, was to “do justice, among the traders and Indians, [and] to redress all abuses.” Nairne, not surprisingly, took these responsibilities seriously. He quickly arrested Child and intervened in a variety of other cases. Some traders grew so upset at these actions that they began to complain to the governor, even accusing the agent undermining the governor’s authority to Indians. Although Nairne’s statements probably involved explanations of the new system of legal oversight, which placed control of the trade under a Board of Commissioners rather than the governor, Johnson took the traders’ complaints seriously. He sent them to the legislature in fall 1707. Within a few months traders were willing to go even farther. They now swore that Nairne was disloyal not only to the governor but to the queen herself. By then, the agent seemed to be not a protector but a betrayer, a traitor.38
Nairne, however, had few doubts about his actions, believing strongly that he was doing what was best for both Indians and Carolina. He gave little credit to these accusations, in part because he knew the character of his accusers, particularly the two who ended up extending the earlier complaints into more specific testimony in June 1708 that provided the pretext that spurred the governor into action. Nairne explained his lack of concern in a later letter to Sunderland. He wrote off one of the men as a “perfect Lunatick.” Nairne noted that he had jailed the other, John Dixon, a few years before, for bestiality, on the complaint of a trader who witnessed Dixon “Buggering a Brown Bitch.” Perhaps aware that the story might seem improbable, Nairne had his allies get a deposition from the witness (along with testimony from an innkeeper who had heard the offender explain how to have sex with a cat). Despite his conviction, Dixon continued to work in Native villages for years after Nairne’s own arrest—and continuing to challenge his authority even after he returned from England.39
In contrast to the casual cruelty of many traders (to animals as well as humans), Nairne treated Native peoples with respect. The Board of Commissioners heard many complaints about traders, but almost none about Nairne. This was not simply the result of the agent’s official position. John Wright, who took over as agent after Nairne’s arrest, was willing to challenge traders in ways that Johnson, whose son-in-law was a major figure in the Indian trade, resisted. But Wright’s relationships soon became deeply problematic. After he was removed in favor of the returned Nairne in 1712, Wright began a seemingly endless series of complaints and suits against the board. His experiences with Indians were even more fraught. Like Nicholson in Virginia, Wright attempted to establish his authority through aggressive demands for obedience. He forced large numbers of Native Americans to wait on him and carry his effects when he traveled, seeking, he explained, to “make them Honour him as their Governor.” The leaders of a Yamasee village complained of Wright’s demands that they provide a lot for a house in its center, and even that residents cut the timber for him.40 Even after he was removed as agent, Wright’s continued dealings with the nation proved troubled. He told a group of Yamasee, one their leaders noted later, that their men were “like women,” and that the Carolinians would capture them all “in one night,” kill their “head men,” and “take all the rest of them for Slaves.” The Yamasee were not the only Native people to resent this severity. Angered at their dealings with Wright, the Albama decided to ally themselves instead with the French.41
Nairne, by contrast, avoided such harshness. The commissioners eagerly sought his return to his position as agent as soon as he returned from England. Less than nine months after he arrived, he agreed to serve as a special commissioner for the Yamasee, perhaps because his seat in the legislature kept him from serving as general agent. Nairne took up the broader position by the end of the year. The relieved commissioners were glad to be rid of the troublesome Wright, but they also made it clear they were pleased to have Nairne back. They were “fully satisfied with your Capacity and Diligence,” they wrote, certain that that he lacked neither “Art nor Adress to manage” relations with the Indians.42
Carolina
“Since my last,” Nairne wrote to Sunderland in July 1708, “my ffortunes have mett with a strange turn.” His previous message, with the map of Indian territory, had actually been sent from the same jail cell only two weeks earlier. His revelation of his plight was similarly studied. Having learned, he stated, that Sunderland was “an enemy to all illegall and unjust oppressions,” he had the confidence to “begg yr. Ldsp’s protection” from the “present Governor” of South Carolina. Ever since the beginning of Johnson’s “reign,” he explained, the province had been “divided,” with the governor’s party the “most violent.” Nairne had fallen prey to men who “often use their power to crush others.”43
Nairne’s complaints about a governor ruling “arbitrarily” would have seemed much more familiar to Sunderland than the discussion of Indian affairs that followed. But Nairne believed his difficulties in both locations raised the same issues. His discussion of Carolina life, prepared a year after Johnson’s 1709 dismissal, highlights the same limited government and social harmony he had noted in Native communities. Nairne held that both Johnson and the Indian traders undermined these values by seeking their self-interest at the expense of the community’s health and safety. In Carolina as well as Indian country, Nairne believed, his opponents failed to treat less powerful people with respect and concern.
The disputes between Nairne and Johnson involved more than their personal differences. Nairne and Johnson, and the factions they belonged to in Carolina (and that they associated with in England), proposed different means of establishing the political