White Eyes, Koquethagechton

A dangerous friendship

In the autumn of 1778, White Eyes traveled with an American army into the Ohio Country. Only weeks earlier, he had helped negotiate one of the most remarkable agreements in early American history, a treaty that raised the possibility of a future Native state within the new United States. Now he was accompanying soldiers of the government with which he had placed considerable hope for peace.

Before the year was over, White Eyes was dead.

His Lenape name was Koquethagechton, although colonial writers recorded it in numerous different forms. By the 1770s, he had emerged as one of the most influential Lenape leaders in the Ohio Country. His challenge was enormous. The American Revolution was spreading westward, British and American agents competed for Native support, and Lenape communities themselves disagreed over whether neutrality, alliance, or war offered the best path forward.

White Eyes repeatedly chose diplomacy.

From the Ohio Country to Philadelphia

At the beginning of the Revolution, White Eyes worked to keep the Lenape from being drawn into the conflict. But neutrality became increasingly difficult as violence spread across the frontier.

White Eyes traveled east to meet directly with American political leaders, including members of the Continental Congress. In April 1776, Congress responded to requests associated with his delegation for a minister and schoolmaster, as well as a blacksmith. Congress also authorized $300 and provided horses, saddles, and other assistance for the journey home.

These negotiations reveal a side of White Eyes that can easily be overlooked. He was not simply choosing between Britain and America. He was exploring whether a relationship with the emerging United States might provide greater security and opportunity for his people.

An extraordinary possibility

That diplomacy reached its high point at Fort Pitt in September 1778.

White Eyes, Captain Pipe, and John Killbuck Jr. represented the Lenape in negotiations with the United States. The resulting Treaty of Fort Pitt was the first formal treaty between the United States and a Native nation.

Buried within it was an extraordinary possibility.

The treaty stated that the United States would not object if the Lenape and other Native nations chose to form a state of their own and seek representation in Congress, provided Congress approved the plan. It was not a promise of statehood, and nothing resembling such a state was ever created.

Still, for a brief moment in 1778, the possibility of Native nations participating politically within the new American union appeared in an official treaty.

White Eyes had helped put it there.

Then he was gone

Only weeks after the treaty, White Eyes accompanied General Lachlan McIntosh's American expedition into the Ohio Country, acting as an intermediary during the campaign.

Then came word that he was dead.

American officials reported that White Eyes had died of smallpox. But later testimony told a very different story: that he had actually been killed by an American militiaman and that the circumstances of his death had been concealed out of fear of how the Lenape would respond.

Later evidence strongly supports the conclusion that White Eyes was killed by an American soldier, although exactly what happened, and who killed him, remains uncertain.

The timing could hardly have been more consequential. Within weeks of negotiating the Treaty of Fort Pitt, one of the strongest advocates for Lenape diplomacy with the Americans was dead.

The boy they sent to Princeton

White Eyes left behind a young son, George Morgan White Eyes, whose life provides a remarkable epilogue to his father's story.

After White Eyes' death, American Indian agent George Morgan became closely involved in the boy's future. The younger White Eyes was sent east for an American education and eventually studied at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University.

Years later, George Morgan White Eyes wrote directly to George Washington, seeking assistance in finding employment. His surviving 1789 letter offers a rare glimpse of a young Lenape man educated within the new republic while carrying the name of one of the most prominent Lenape leaders of the Revolutionary era.

What White Eyes was trying to build

White Eyes is sometimes remembered simply as an American ally. His story was considerably more complicated.

The Lenape had already been pushed westward from much of their earlier homeland, and another expanding population was now pressing into the Ohio Country. White Eyes sought peace where he believed it possible, attempted to keep his people out of a devastating frontier war, negotiated directly with Congress, and explored education and other forms of assistance that might strengthen Lenape communities.

Most remarkably, he participated in negotiations that briefly opened the possibility that Native nations might retain their political identity while finding a place within the emerging American system.

That possibility did not survive

The Native state envisioned in the Treaty of Fort Pitt never materialized. Warfare intensified, relations between Lenape communities and the United States deteriorated, and violence across the Ohio frontier grew increasingly brutal.

White Eyes had placed considerable hope in diplomacy with the new United States. He died before he could discover what, if anything, its promises would ultimately mean for his people.

Discover more…

1. Delaware Nation — History
Follow White Eyes through the history of the Lenape themselves, including his efforts to protect Lenape lands and his pivotal role in the 1778 Treaty of Fort Pitt.
Explore White Eyes through Delaware Nation history

2. American Philosophical Society — White Eyes Speaks to Congress
See an extraordinary surviving transcription of White Eyes’ own December 1776 address to the Continental Congress and discover the diplomacy taking place behind the Revolution.
Explore White Eyes’ speech and the Jasper Yeates Papers

3. U.S. Department of State — The 1778 Treaty of Fort Pitt
Step inside the negotiations where White Eyes, Captain Pipe, and John Killbuck Jr. met American representatives to forge the first treaty between the United States and a Native nation.
Explore the Treaty of Fort Pitt

4. National Archives — The Actual Treaty of Fort Pitt
Examine the original 1778 treaty that placed White Eyes at the center of an extraordinary proposal for a Lenape homeland with the possibility of representation in the new United States.
View the original Treaty of Fort Pitt

5. Princeton — Chief White Eyes
Discover White Eyes’ remarkable Princeton connection, from his friendship with Indian agent George Morgan to the fate of his son after White Eyes’ mysterious death in 1778.
Explore Chief White Eyes at Princeton’s Lunaapahkiing Timetree

6. Princeton & Slavery — George Morgan White Eyes
Follow the little-known story of White Eyes’ son, who was sent east after his father’s death and eventually entered the College of New Jersey, today’s Princeton University.
Read the story of George Morgan White Eyes

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