Hopocan - When Neutrality Was No Longer Possible

Hopocan had tried to stay out of the white man’s war. Then the war came to him.

Known to the English as Captain Pipe, Hopocan was an influential Lenape leader when the American Revolution erupted. To his people, this was not simply a fight for independence. Two white powers were at war, and Lenape homelands lay between them.

Hopocan initially favored neutrality. In 1778, he joined White Eyes and Gelelemend in negotiating the Treaty of Fort Pitt, the first formal treaty between the United States and a Native nation.

For a moment, diplomacy still seemed possible.

Then the ground shifted beneath him.

White Eyes died while traveling with American troops, officially of smallpox, although later evidence strongly suggested he had been killed by an American militiaman. Hopocan suffered losses even closer to home: American militia killed his mother and a brother. As American expeditions struck deeper into Lenape country, neutrality became increasingly difficult to maintain.

Hopocan turned toward the British.

But alliance did not mean loyalty.

At Detroit in 1781, he confronted his new allies. Britain and its rebellious colonies had created this war, he argued. Why should Native people be expected to die in it?

“You both have raised the quarrel within yourselves,” he told them.

It was vintage Hopocan. He could fight beside the British and still remind them that their war was not his war.

Then Came Gnadenhutten

In March 1782, Pennsylvania militiamen entered the Christian Lenape settlement of Gnadenhutten and murdered 96 men, women, and children.

Only months later, Colonel William Crawford led an American expedition toward the Native settlements along the Sandusky. Lenape, Wyandot, and other warriors defeated them. Crawford was captured.

Hopocan was there.

Contemporary accounts place him among the Lenape gathered before Crawford’s death and describe him addressing those assembled. Crawford was then tortured and killed.

The details have been retold and embellished for generations, but the timing cannot be ignored. Crawford had entered a country still reeling from Gnadenhutten.

The man who had once argued for neutrality was now fighting a brutal frontier war.

“I Take the Briars and Thorns From Your Feet”

Then came one of the most remarkable moments in Hopocan’s story.

In 1783, with the Revolution ending, American emissaries traveled into the Ohio country carrying news of peace. When they reached the Delaware town on the Sandusky, they encountered the man who had fought them only a year before.

Hopocan welcomed them.

“I take the briars and thorns from your feet…”

War had not erased diplomacy.

But there was bitter irony in the peace they brought. Britain and the United States had settled their quarrel while making decisions about Native lands without the Native nations at the table.

Hopocan had lived long enough to see neutrality fail, diplomacy fail, alliances fail, and war fail to secure his people’s homeland.

His exact dates remain uncertain, with his birth generally placed around 1725–1740 and his death often around 1818. But the choices that defined his life are much clearer.

He negotiated with Americans. He lost family to American violence. He allied with the British, challenged the British, fought the Americans, and then sat down with Americans again when the fighting ended.

Hopocan does not fit neatly into the American story of Patriots and Loyalists.

He was Lenape.

And for Hopocan, the question was never simply which white power would win.

It was what would be left for his people when the war was over.

Learn More:

• Captain Pipe’s Dilemma — Ohio University
  Follow Hopocan from his early attempts at neutrality to his decision to fight alongside the British.
  Read Captain Pipe’s Dilemma

• Treaty of Fort Pitt — National Museum of American Diplomacy
  Explore the 1778 treaty Hopocan helped negotiate between the Lenape and the newly formed United States.
  Explore the Treaty of Fort Pitt

• George McCully Journal, 1783 — Library of Congress
  See the original journal documenting an American expedition’s remarkable encounter with Hopocan at Sandusky.
  View the Original 1783 Journal

• Captain Pipe at Sandusky — Library of Congress
  Discover the 1783 meeting where Hopocan welcomed former enemies and spoke of removing the “briars and thorns” from their feet.
  Explore Captain Pipe at Sandusky

• A Journey to the Northwest Frontier in 1783 — Library of Congress
  Travel with the American delegation that entered Lenape country just after the Revolution and came face-to-face with Hopocan.
  Follow the 1783 Journey

• Hopocan Research Resources — Library of Congress
  Dig deeper into primary sources and historical works documenting Captain Pipe and the 1783 journey into Lenape country.
  Explore the Library of Congress Resources

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