“No Man Knows This Country Better”: The Frontier Life of John Gibson

John Gibson is not a well-known figure today, but he certainly got around during his own lifetime (1740–1822). Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he experienced Indian captivity during his youth, worked in the fur trade, served as an interpreter and soldier for the patriot cause during the American Revolution, and ended his career as a federal officeholder in the Indiana Territory. Although he never attained the fame that would have placed him among the “A list” Founding Fathers, he did have a Zelig-like ubiquity that brought him into their orbit, and his life’s story merits telling in its own right.Gary S. Williams tells that story with patient and careful attention accorded to the scattered sources for Gibson’s life. It is not an easy task because Gibson left no collection of papers or journals in the archives. Most of what we know about him comes from the pens of others, who generally seemed to have a good opinion of him, an assessment reflected in turn in Williams’ analysis. In some respects, this book is a throwback to an earlier vein of frontier historiography in which western settlers were intrepid people of practical minds and skills who subdued the wilderness with hard work and common sense. Gibson may in fact have been more principled when it came to dealing with Indians than many of his contemporaries, but his interests and sympathies still clearly rested with the people trying to dispossess those Native peoples.At age eighteen, Gibson enlisted in the Forbes campaign of 1758, a fateful act that brought him to the forks of the Ohio River, where he would become one of Pittsburgh’s most prominent early inhabitants. Adept at speaking several Indian languages, he became an interpreter for Sir William Johnson’s Indian Department and was taken captive during Pontiac’s War. His adoption by a Delaware woman saved him from the same torture and execution he witnessed of one of his companions. Gibson’s captivity lasted long enough for him to have a son with an Indian wife, but by 1765 he had returned to his work as a fur trader and interpreter based at Fort Pitt. Over the next decade, he became embroiled in the dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania for control over the Ohio country, and played a small but controversial role in American literary history by serving as the interpreter and only witness to Logan’s Lament, the Indian speech made famous by Thomas Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia. The same linguistic skills that put him in Logan’s company also made him a valued intermediary for ransoming captives, a task that Williams notes required “the patience of a diplomat and the audacity of a repo man” (46).During the American Revolution, Gibson returned to military life as an officer in a Virginia regiment in the Continental Army. He went east briefly in 1778 to join the army at Valley Forge but otherwise spent the war in the Ohio country, where he commanded the garrison at Fort Laurens and watched Indian relations devolve into the bloody and senseless violence that culminated in the Gnadenhutten massacre in 1782. In his efforts to distance Gibson from the Indian-hating that characterized the war in the West, Williams occasionally overplays his hand. In one such instance, he applauds Gibson for appointing his métis son an ensign in his regiment, an act that Williams attributes to Gibson’s dedication as “a father and a civil rights crusader” (77). Rather than being a pioneer for human equality, Gibson was more likely motivated by garden variety nepotism. He did, however, call the militiamen responsible for the Gnadenhutten massacre “the most savage set of miscreants that ever degraded human nature” (95).Gibson’s post-Revolutionary career continued in a similar vein, combining public service and the pursuit of private gain. He attended the Pennsylvania state constitutional convention in 1789–90, became a local judge, and joined other Federalists in condemning the Whiskey Rebellion. He parlayed his political connections into an appointment as the secretary of the newly formed Indiana Territory in 1800, where he put his linguistic skills to work behind Governor William Henry Harrison’s efforts to force more Native land cessions. Appropriately for someone who often labored behind the scenes at such transactions, the only visual image of Gibson dating to his lifetime is a drawing showing an altercation between Harrison and the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, in which Gibson has his back turned to the viewer as he calls for armed guards to intercede. When war broke out in 1812, Gibson became acting governor of Indiana while his boss went off to fight, a job that Williams praises him for conducting with energy and firmness. In retirement, he returned to Pittsburgh and spent the rest of his days among family there.Williams clearly admires his subject, and he praises Gibson for the concern he exhibited toward Native Americans (particularly his two children by Indian wives), as well as his level-headedness and work ethic. The flaw that Williams finds in Gibson’s character is his endorsement of slavery’s expansion into the West, which Williams contrasts with his more progressive attitudes toward Native Americans. Here and in other instances throughout the book, it would be useful to have a more sustained comparison between Gibson and his contemporaries. Williams brings up Simon Girty at several points, presenting the notorious loyalist as a sort of anti-Gibson, but Gibson’s story also calls to mind more famous frontiersmen-captives like Daniel Boone and James Smith. What insights do their lives offer into the way Gibson lived his? Williams has provided us with the “life” of Gibson’s story; it would be useful to know a bit more about the “times.”

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