John Johnston (Indian Agent)

John Johnston was an Indian agent in the United States Northwest Territory. He was born in 1775 in Ireland. His father was Scottish and his mother was a Huguenot. The family emmigrated to Pennsylvania in 1786.

Johnston's career with Native Americans started as a wagoner for General Anthony Wayne's Legion of the United States. [Thornbrough, 12] He returned to Pennsylvania after the campaign and worked as a law clerk.

In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Johnston as Indian Agent at the new trading agency in Fort Wayne. His primary responsibility was to manage trade so that Indians in the area would not seek trade with the nearby British. Johnston was responsible to the territorial governor, William Henry Harrison, and to the Superintendent of Indian Trade. Almost immediately, however, a rivalry began between Johnston and William Wells, the official interpreter at Fort Wayne. The Miami of Fort Wayne trusted Wells, who had been adopted into their tribe, while U.S. government officials questioned Wells' loyalty and sided with Johnston. [Thornbrough, 12] Johnston remained at Fort Wayne through a period of growing resentment between the American Indians and the United States, [Burnhart, pg 375-378] and filed a report of Indian accounts of the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. [Burnhart, pg 391, fn 38]

That same year, an Indian agency was established at Piqua, Ohio, and Johnston asked to be transferred to the new agency. He was at this agency during the War of 1812, and organized a Shawnee party under Captain Logan to rescue women and children during the Siege of Fort Wayne, where his brother, Stephen, was killed. [Shelby County History, link below] . He had much better relations with the local Shawnee and Wyandot than he had with the Indians at Fort Wayne, and served as Indian Agent until the 1829. He helped negotiate the Treaty of Upper Sandusky in 1842, which removed the Wyandot from Ohio to the West. [ [http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/places/nw13/index.shtml Ohio Historical Society] ]

He was a Whig, and in 1844 was one of Ohio's delegates to the Whig Party's national convention. After the convention, he travelled to campaign for Henry Clay.

John Johnston was a founder of Kenyon College and also served on the board of trustees of Miami University. [Ohio History Central, link below] He wrote a history of Northwest Indians before he died in 1861 in Washington, D.C. Today, his Piqua farm maintained by the Ohio Historical Society.

References

* Barnhart, John D. and Riker, Dorothy L. "Indiana to 1816. The Colonial Period." ©1971, Indiana Historical Society. ISBN 0-87195-109-6

*Thornbrough, Gayle, editor. "Letter Book of the Indian Agency at Fort Wayne, 1809 - 1815." 1961, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis.

External links

* [http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=216 Ohio History Central]
* [http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/places/nw13/index.shtml Piqua Historical Area - Johnston farm]
* [http://www.shelbycountyhistory.org/schs/indians/coljohnjohnston.htm Shelby County, Ohio History]