Owing to his business methods, some of the Quakers were not well disposed toward Croghan. At a conference with the Delawares and Six Nations held at Easton, in 1758, one of the Quakers present wrote home an account of the proceedings in a tone not favorable to Croghan. "He treats them [the Indians] with liquor," wrote the Quaker, "and gives out that he himself is an Indian.... At the close of the conference one Nichos, a Mohawk, made a speech.... This Nichos is G. Croghan's father-in-law."
If Croghan is to be believed, however, he was opposed to giving liquor to the Indians. While arranging for this very conference he had written to Secretary Richard Peters of Pennsylvania, "You'll excuse boath writing and peper, and guess at my maining, fer I have at this minnitt 20 drunken Indians about me. I shall be ruined if ye taps are not stopt."
Although Croghan had come to America in 1741, this letter, with its "guess at my maining," and another in which he has "lase" for "lease," suggest that, if his pronunciation may be judged from his spelling, he retained a rich Irish brogue. Certainly his Irish wit and good nature served him well in his dealing with the Indians. He was frequently useful in outwitting the French Indian-agents, and in maintaining the friendship of the red men for the English as against the French. General Bouquet, who seems to have detested Croghan, wrote to General Gage, at a time when new powers had been conferred upon Indian-agents, "It is to be regretted that powers of such importance should be trusted to a man illiterate, impudent, and ill-bred." Nevertheless, within a few months, Bouquet wrote to Gage recommending Croghan as the person most competent to negotiate with the Western Indians for British control of the French posts in the Illinois country--a mission upon which Croghan was wounded, captured, and pillaged by the Indians. In 1768 the General Assembly in Philadelphia put upon record, in a message to the Governor, a high opinion of Croghan, referring to "the eminent services he has rendered to the Nation and its Colonies in conciliating the affections of the Indians to the British interest."
At the end of a stormy voyage from America, being shipwrecked on the Norman coast, Croghan reached England in February, 1764, bearing an important letter on Indian affairs from Sir William Johnson to the Lords of Trade. One might expect to find Croghan gratified by the comforts of London life as compared with the rough hardships of America. A scout under Washington's command, a captain of Indians under Braddock, a border ranger upon the western frontier, a trader upon the banks of the Ohio, a pioneer in many a wilderness, Croghan had seen all kinds of hard service in the twenty-three years since he left Ireland. But in the midst of metropolitan splendors he grew homesick for the wild life of the New World. Writing in March, and again in April, to American friends, he expressed his disgust with the city's pride and pomp, declared that he was sick of London and its vanities, and set forth as his chief ambition a desire to live on a little farm in America. In the autumn of the same year Croghan shipped for the long journey across the Atlantic. It is five years later that he appears at the foot of Otsego Lake, apparently in fulfillment of his desire to make a home and to be the founder of a settlement.