Shenandoah Valley man helped negotiate first formal U.S. treaty with Native Americans

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a three-year project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page.

It’s likely few people knew the western frontier of Virginia better than Thomas Lewis when the U.S. declared independence from Britain in 1776.

The amount of interaction he had with Native Americans before being appointed to negotiate the first formal U.S. treaty with them is unclear.

Lewis hailed from a family that settled in Augusta County in 1732, near what is now Staunton, and in 1746, while still in his 20s, he was appointed the first surveyor of Augusta County.

In Colonial Virginia, the fundamental job of a surveyor was to transfer land from the crown to private ownership, Ron Bailey wrote in the Colonial Williamsburg Journal.

Author Sarah Hughes wrote in her book, “Surveyors and Statesmen: Land Measuring in Colonial Virginia,” that “after 1740, as vast areas of western land were organized into counties, the colonial county surveyors of the region rose in power and prestige in an unprecedented way.”

While prestigious, the men appointed surveyors, including George Washington and Peter Jefferson — father of Thomas Jefferson — earned their money in the rugged occupation that required traversing some of the region’s most unforgiving terrain. Lewis worked with and corresponded with both men.

Of surveying with Peter Jefferson, Lewis wrote: “It was with the greatest Difficulty we Could get along-the mountains being prodigiously full of fallen Timber & Ivey as thick as it could grow, so interwoven that horse or man Could hardly force his way through it. . . .”

On another occasion, while surveying the Fairfax Line, Lewis wrote: “We got all our Bagage over as it Began to grow Dark So we were Obliged to Encamp on the Bank & in Such a place where we Could not find a plain Big enough for one man to Lye on. No fire wood Except green or Roten Spruce pine no place for our horses to feed.”

Although he wrote about the challenges of surveying, Lewis did not write about any encounters he may have had with Native Americans. 

“You figure he had to cross paths with Indians among different tribes in all that surveying,”  Thomas Lewis descendant John Batzel said in a telephone interview.

Batzel, of Roanoke, researched Lewis extensively about 10 years ago, compiling nearly 400 pages of information about his life. Batzel became interested in his five-times great-grandfather when he saw a tobacco box Lewis once owned up for auction. Though he couldn’t compete with the winning bid, it piqued his interest in learning more about his ancestor.

Discovering that Thomas Lewis and his younger brother, Andrew, were the chief negotiators of that first formal treaty between the U.S. and Native Americans was “a neat find,” he said.

The Lewis brothers were picked for the diplomatic mission just months after the U.S. signed its most significant treaties with France, the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. Having gained economic, diplomatic and military support from France, the Continental Congress turned its attention to gaining the support of another former foe closer to home, the Lenape Indians. Before the Revolution, the Colonies fought alongside the British against Indians aligned with France, including the Lenape, also known as the Delaware Indians.

In 1778, the Continental Army needed Lenape support to cross their territory and attack the British in Detroit.

Congress “appropriated $10,000 for goods and gifts to present to the Lenape leaders to show the United States’ goodwill,” according to an article on the website for the National Museum of American Diplomacy.

The negotiations took place at Fort Pitt, present-day Pittsburgh, where the Lewis brothers met with three Native American representatives. A number of other U.S. representatives were present to observe the negotiations, according to a text of the treaty. Pennsylvania was supposed to appoint a pair of diplomats to take part in the negotiations, but didn’t.

“No one is certain which language the Lenape and Americans spoke during the negotiations, but it was most likely a mixture of Algonquian dialects and English,” states the NMAD article. “But both communicated using the diplomatic tools that had been established between Native nations and European nations when the American colonies had been part of the British empire.”

The negotiations lasted several days, the article states, before the treaty was signed on Sept. 17, 1778. The Lenape agreed to permit the Continental Army to cross their lands, to guide them to British locations and to join the troops of the United States.

The Americans promised to build a fort in Lenape territory for protection and promised trade goods. In addition, the treaty provided for the eventual creation of a 14th state governed by Native Americans with a political representative in the U.S. Congress.

Author Eric Sterner dubbed the treaty a “lopsided relationship” in an article for the Journal of the American Revolution, writing that it was a deal “giving the Americans permission to pass through Delaware territory when conducting military operations against the British, requiring Delaware warriors to assist the Americans when possible, and establishing an asymmetrical economic relationship, the terms of which were to be left to Congress with the ‘advice and concurrence’ of Delaware representatives.”

But the U.S. failed to honor many of the terms and following the suspicious death of the Native Americans’ chief negotiator only months later, the deal fell apart and the Lenape sided with the British.

While the Treaty of Fort Pitt failed, Lewis’s career of public service, which included representing Augusta County in four of the five Virginia Constitutional conventions following the dissolution of the House of Burgesses, continued and in 1779 he was appointed to help resolve a boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia. In 1788, two years before his death at age 71, Lewis became a delegate from Rockingham County, which was carved out of Augusta County in 1778, to the Virginia Convention which ratified the U.S. constitution.