Of Note: George Washington and the Beaver Tail: An Unfinished Tale

This post is by Manuscript Division senior reference librarian Edith Sandler. Of Note is an occasional series in which share we items that have caught our eye.

This is the story of a letter and an unusual gift presented to President George Washington on a late spring day in June 1795.  It’s a charming, quaint tale, that I often share with visitors to the Manuscript Division because it exemplifies how personal papers can shed light on personalities of the past.

After almost ten years of reciting the tale of what I have always called the “Beaver Tail Letter,” I decided to take a more studied look at this letter and the story it tells. Rather than focusing on George Washington’s reaction to the letter, I considered both the perspective of the person who sent it to him and the unspoken voices of those whose cultures and traditions tell another story.

June 2, 1795. While the permanent capital in Washington, D.C., was under construction, President George Washington occupied a residence one block north of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. In his diary, Washington noted how that day the wind blew hard from the southwest and heavy showers fell in the afternoon.  On that same day, in the frontier town of Cincinnati along the Ohio River, a territorial judge by the name of George Turner sent Washington a letter, accompanied by what Turner described as a “possibly  . . .rare” gift: “a Buffalo Robe adorned with porcupine quills, after the manner of the Missouri Indians,” alongside “a dozen of Beavers’ Tails.”

I enjoy imagining Washington reading that letter and receiving the accompanying gifts. How might he have reacted when he read the last line, informing him that Turner had thoughtfully enclosed the “Canadian Receipt” (we would now call it a “recipe”) for cooking the beaver tails?

Turner’s language adds to the wry, even mischievous tone of his letter to Washington. Though the letter itself is brief, Turner’s complimentary closing is disproportionately eloquent: “With Sentiments of unfeigned respect I have the honour to be, Sir Your most obedient Servant, G. Turner.” The recipe has a decidedly sophisticated flair, advising that the tail be spread with “a coat composed of fine crumbs of bread and parsley, chopped very fine,” and that it should be served with “Vinegar, Salt, and Pepper.”

This is the story I have told for many years, until I decided to find out why George Turner sent Washington this impish-sounding missive.

When George Washington was elected president, George Turner, like many others, appealed to him for a federal position. Before writing to Washington, he solicited aid and advice from James Madison. Turner’s application is one of 960 such dossiers comprising  Series 7 of the George Washington Papers. In September 1789, the Senate approved his nomination as one of three judges for the recently acquired Northwest Territory.

Turner delayed taking up his appointment until almost four years after securing the job. Accounts from those close to Washington and the daily executive department records in the Journal of the Proceedings of the President detail the president’s increasing annoyance with Turner’s postponement. When Turner had not yet reported for duty three months after his nomination was approved, Major William Jackson, who had served Washington as both a military and personal secretary, warned Turner that his “delay, in repairing to the western-terri[tory] would as certainly excite the President’s displeasure as I was convinced it would his disappointment. Accustomed to punctuality himself, he expects to see it in others.”

By February 1793, Turner had still not taken up his station, and Washington’s administration appealed to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson “to press him to go immediately . . . and to express to him the President’s desire that he may repair thither without delay.” But the next month, Turner had still not left for the Territory, and the administration began to consider “[who] has authority to issue an order for Judge Turner to go to the N.W. Territory.”

At last, in April 1793, Washington wrote to Thomas Jefferson in frustration: “I am so much surprized [sic], and mortified at the conduct of Judge Turner, that if he should be in Philadelphia at the receipt of this Letter, and not the best evidence of his proceeding to the North-Western Territory immediately; it is my desire that you will, in my name, express to him. . . that I can no longer submit to such abuses of public trust without instituting . . . an enquiry into his conduct.”  Jefferson wrote to Judge Turner a few days later warning him that “some legal enquiry . . . should be instituted.”

Almost four years after he was appointed, Turner finally took up his post in St. Clair county, and by October 1794, Judge Turner was holding court in what is now Illinois. But far from acting as an arbiter of peace, “Judge Turner so enraged the people by his meddlesome interference in Indian affairs and his ‘unexampled tyranny and oppression’ that they petitioned congress for redress.” In May 1796, residents sent a petition with 49 names to the US House of Representatives, asking for Judge Turner’s removal. Instead, Judge Turner resigned over the winter of 1797-1798.

Let’s return to the letter, recipe, and gifts Turner sent Washington in June 1795. If I were Washington reading that letter from old fly-in-the-ointment Turner, I don’t think I would find it humorous at all. The “charming, quaint” tale I had told for so long now had some meat on the bones (or fat on the tail, so to speak). But I also want to consider those to whom Turner attributes the recipe for cooking beaver tail: “the Missouri Indians.”

The Northwest Territory, the region defined by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, was home to a number of Native American peoples in addition to a handful of white settlers. The ordinance  gave the governor and three judges of the Northwest Territory responsibility not only for adjudicating legal disputes, but also for devising and enforcing laws “best suited to the circumstances of the district,” so that the fledgling government could sell land to settlers. Doing so required establishing the authority of the federal and territorial government over a vast stretch of land covering the modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as the northeastern part of Minnesota. The removal of Native American peoples, including the Delaware, Miami, Potawatomi, Shawnee, and others, was a key objective of the Northwest Territory’s first governor, Arthur St. Clair, and mutual hostilities between the territorial governor and native tribes, supported by British allies, escalated to a series of armed conflicts that came to be called the Northwest Indian War.

Returning to the letter, there is a sad irony to the way Turner seems to employ Indigenous foodways to snipe at Washington. When he mentions “the Missouri Indians” as the source of the recipe, to what Indigenous communities was Turner referring? How did Turner learn of this recipe? What happened to the cultures and traditions of the Indigenous tribes forcibly swept off their land?

This is where the story told by “The Beaver Tail Letter” becomes a mystery. More research needs to be done to answer these, and other questions. Will you write the next chapter? Contact the Manuscript Reading Room through Ask a Librarian to continue the conversation.

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“Judge Turner resigned . . .” Clarence Walworth Alvord, The Illinois Country: 1673-1818 (Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1920).

“the Northwest Indian War . . .” Michael Les Benedict and John F. Winkler, eds., The History of Ohio Law (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2004).