[3] His early education was at the College of St. Omer, a Jesuit school in modern-day France (then part of the Austrian Netherlands).
After that he was frequently absent from Congress, traveling the Carolina and Georgia frontiers negotiating with the Indian tribes.
When the Southwest Territory's legislature was formed in 1794, White was selected as its delegate to the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1794 to 1796.
He used his position and travels as Indian superintendent to serve as agent conducting negotiations between Sevier and the governor of Spanish Louisiana.
In the 1790s he was involved in William Blount's plan to work with the Indians and Britain in staging an invasion of Spanish Florida.