In the summer of 1788, when she was about eighteen years old, Susan Woodrow Lear traveled from her home in Philadelphia to Boston. In the journal of her trip she described the other occupants of the coach she boarded at six in the morning: two women, also “an old Quaker and an Indian Chief.”

At first I felt very much afraid of him, but he turned out to be the most agreeable of the company. … After breakfast the Indian Chief played several tunes on his Clarinet. He played very well, In short, he is quite accomplished. ‘Tis about three years since the Marquis De la Fayette sent for him over to France and he has since been at the expense of giving him a very liberal education. He appears to have improved his time very well. His observations are just and his manners are very agreeable. … He also gave us a very entertaining account of the manners and customs of his own [Oneida] Nation.

Once in Providence, and her fear gone, Susan and her host

sent an invitation to the Prince to come and dine with us … he came dressed in a scarlet coat trimmed with gold lace. He really made a very good figure. After dinner … I danced a cotillion with him. He dances by far the best of any person I ever saw attempt it. He also danced the War dance for us which was very terrible. … In the course of the evening he came and sat by me and paid me a number of compliments, among the rest he said I resembled the Marchioness De la F[ayette] very much.

Peter Otsiquette, the Indian chief referred to, died in 1792 in Philadelphia, at age twenty-six. Thomas Jefferson wrote his daughter Martha: “I believe you knew Otchakitz (Otsiquette), the Indian who lived with the Marquis de Lafayette. He came here lately with some deputies from his nation and died here of pleurisy. I was at the funeral yesterday, He was buried standing up, according to their manner.” In all likelihood Jefferson meant that Otsiquette was laid out flat or straight and not in the fetal position typical of many Indian burials. There is no mention of the corpse’s position in the following account of the funeral.

On Wednesday, March 21st [Otsiquette’s] funeral was attended from Oellers’ Hotel to the Presbyterian burying ground in Mulberry street, where his remains were interred. The corpse was preceded by detachments of the light infantry of the city, with arms reversed—drums muffled—music playing a solemn dirge. The corpse was followed by six of the chiefs as mourners, succeeded by all the warriors now in this city; the reverend clergy of all denominations; the Secretary of War and the gentlemen of the War Department; officers of the federal army, and of the militia; and a number of citizens. The concourse assembled on this occasion is supposed to have amounted to more than 10,000 persons.

The excerpt is from In the Words of Women, Chapter 8, page 239. Lear’s journal is at the Rhode Island Historical Society.The Jefferson quote is from I Was a Teenager in the American Revolution by Elizabeth Metz (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006) page 221. The description of the funeral is from “The Universal Asylum,” March 1792, which appeared in The Magazine of American History with Notes and Queries, Volume 4, January 1880, page 467.

Because Sarah Livingston Jay and her husband John Jay were often separated during their marriage, they relied on their correspondence to convey information about their families and events of interest. Writing to John in Boston where, as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court he was riding circuit, Sarah expresses the value she attaches to his letters. And marvels at the possibility that each of them is writing to the other at the same time.

New York 10th May 1790My dear Mr. Jay,
It gives me pain to find that you have suffered from suspence that has been excited by your not hearing from us. It is very natural that silence on my part should occasion solicitude on yours, but I must assure you that your not hearing must be owing to accident, for I had the pleasure of writing to you a week after you left me, & expected that it wd. find you at N. Haven; & on my return from Eliz. Town [the Livingston family home in Elizabethtown, New Jersey] I again wrote & address’d my letter to you at Boston; since which Peter [their son] has likewise written; but I flatter myself that by this time you are convinc’d that I have not been negligent by the receipt of those fugitives. It gave me pleasure in perusing yr. last favor to observe from the date of it that we had both been engaged on the same day perhaps at the same instant in writing to each other. What a delightful circumstance! it is that our thoughts & affections are not bounded by the space we occupy, & likewise that by the invention of letters we can make each other sensible that they are not.

The excerpted letter is from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University, The Papers of John Jay, ID6524. See other posts on the subject of mail and letter-writing HERE and HERE.

See another post by Sarah Jay.