1728 -- DEPARTURE OF
              THE SHAWNEE TRIBE

The angst.  You finally finish setting up your Indian trading post along the Delaware River, and with not even a passing "fair thee well...", your entire tribal customer base suddenly acts to relocate en masse to another river basin.  What the heck just happened?!!  How did this woeful state of affairs ever come to pass?  While we all know that Dupui was not the gent who coined the phrase "the best-laid plans," in view of this ruinous debacle he certainly could have been.  For Dupui, this was undeniably an unmitigated disaster of catastrophic financial proportions.  

Dupui's entire mercantile investment now stood at risk.  But what caused the Shawnee Tribe to depart?  Obviously, it was not a decision that they would have taken lightly (especially after having formalized an agreement to forever defend Dupui).  Something more than sufficiently disconcerting must have sparked their departure... but what was it?  Let's review what we know:

Nicholas Dupui was a merchant who hailed from Kizenick, a Rochester Township village in New York's Ulster County.  Tax records from the Rochester area marked family members as the wealthiest freeholders in the entirety of the region.  As per the Ulster County Historical Society, the practice of holding slaves in the county during this period of time was "almost universal, so that all persons of consequence were expected to be in possession of a greater or lesser number of slaves."  Nicholas Dupui was certainly a man of consequence.  Thus, when he ultimately arrived to set up a trading post immediately next to the Shawnee Tribe, Dupui doubtless brought with him a sizable contingent of slaves to assist in the building of his post, in the building of his house, in the building of his grist mill, and in the farming of his newly acquired property.

Apparently, however, Dupui must have been somewhat of a harsh taskmaster.  We can infer this conclusion from the contents of this June 1732 letter from the Chiefs of the Shawanese Indians (Noochickoneh, Pawquawsie, Uppockeaty and Queequeepto), to Pennsylvania Governor Gordon wherein they detail why they had left their former tribal home: 

One reason of our leaving our former settlements and coming here is, several negro slaves used to run away and come amongst us; and we thought ye English would blame us for it.

The principle of risk aversion had dictated the Shawnee action.