The British, as it were, attempted to rein in the parade of westward colonial expansion in America, much to colonists' displeasure; and compounding the pressures leading to the Revolution.
Historian, Wilcomb E. Washburn, wrote extensively on Indian Country issues, including land allotments, cultural repression, and colonial settlement into Indian Country, restricted under English Rule, as a causative factor in colonial rebellion against Britain. He gave a presentation, while Director of American Studies at the Smithsonian Institute, on the less celebrated origins of July 4th festivities. The content of this piece is little more than a synopsis, with some editorializing from me, of Washburn's extensive presentation "Indians and the American Revolution," which should really be read in its unadulterated entirety.
The role of the American Indian during the American Revolution was a shadowy and tragic one...because the Indian was present also in the subconscious mind of the colonists as a central ingredient in the conflict with the Mother Country.
Framing the magnitude of colonial displeasure over being deprived their "inherent" God-given right to manifest their destiny, willy-nilly, across North America would be incomplete without contemplating The Great Boston Tea Party. On December 16, 1773, The Sons of Liberty disguised themselves as Narragansett Indians to dump 90,000 pounds of tea, with a value of around 2 million dollars in today's market, into the harbor. Initially, one may be inclined to attribute this masquerade as merely a means to obscure identification, but, in light of colonial resentment against the Royal Proclamation of 1763, prohibiting colonists from buying or settling lands west of the Appalachians, designed to reserve westward lands for Indians, this decision seems, perhaps, calculated to promote animosity between the British and the Indians English Parliament sought to protect.
Although we have all heard about the unfairness of taxation without representation, it occurs to me that a significant part of the complaint may have been associated with the Parliament's refusal to consult with, or consider, colonial opinions and desires when prohibiting settlement west of the Appalachians.
According to Washburn, from 1763 through 1775, Britain made a series of treaties with Indian Tribes, as equal sovereignties, establishing a contiguous border from Florida to Lake Ontario, "confirming in the minds of Indians (and of many colonists) the belief that the Indian country was closed to speculation and settlement by the increasingly aggressive colonists."
However, in 1774, Lord Dunsmore's War, premised upon purported native hostilities, and amounting to little more than a colonial land-grab, first encompassed the Delawares and Shawnee, but soon drew the ire of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy who questioned colonial disregard for treaties-established boundaries protecting the Ohio River Valley. Eventually, the Iroquois were convinced to reaffirmed their peace with Britain and to urge the Shawnee to reach accord with Virginians.
English Parliament's Quebec Act, likewise, limited colonial expansion. As Washburn further elaborates:
Whether one seeks to explain the subsequent break as a direct consequence of the British government's attempt to stymie colonial land speculation and expansion, or merely indirectly related to it, there is no doubt that British restrictions on colonial freedom of action in this as in other fields helped to convince the colonists that violent reaction might be the preferable alternative. Violence was not long in coming. When the citizens of Boston threw overboard English tea (while, interestingly, dressed as Indians), the English government responded by closing the Port of Boston. In explaining the growing crisis to the Iroquois at a conference in January 1775, Guy Johnson asserted that:
This dispute was solely occasioned by some people, who notwithstanding a law of the King and his wise Men, would not let some Tea land, but destroyed it, on which he was angry, and sent some Troops with the General [Thomas Gage], whom you have long known, to see the Laws executed and bring the people to their sences, and as he is proceeding with great wisdom, to shew them their great mistake, I expect it will soon be over.
Neither the loyalists nor the patriots sought to enlist Indian support at this time. Indeed, both sides urged the Indians to remain neutral on the grounds that the disputes were a family quarrel in which the Indians were not concerned.
However, between 1774-75, George Washington enlisted the aid of Stockbridge, Passamaquoddy, St. John's and Penobscot Indians, which the English Superintendents of Indian Affairs later used to justify drawing other tribes into the disputes.
The Continental Congress, on which I will not pass comment at this time, crafted talking points, in 1775, rightly recognizing the disadvantages of a unified British-Indian offensive against colonists, designed to persuade Indians to remain neutral:
This is a family quarrel between us and Old England. You Indians are not concerned in it. We don't wish you to take up the hatchet against the king's troops. We desire you to remain at home, and not join either side, but keep the hatchet buried deep.
Ethan Allen, now immortalized in many people's mind as a purveyor of fine furnishings, sent a message, chest-thumping, obsequious, and wheedling, by turn, to the powerful Iroquois in the summer of 1776:
I know how to shute and ambush just like the Indian and want your Warriors to come and see me and help me fight Regulars You know they Stand all along close Together Rank and file and my men fight so as Indians Do I want your Warriors to Join with me and my Warriors like Brothers and Ambush the Regulars, if you will I will Give you Money Blankets Tomehawks Knives and Paint and the Like as much as you say because they first killed our men when it was Peace time.
The British went for something more substantive, theatrical, and raw, inviting the Six Nations "to feast on a Bostonian and drink his Blood." Symbolically, blessedly, roast ox and wine were substituted instead of Bostonians.
A Seneca Warrior responded, concerning colonists, to an English Colonel:
We have now lived in Peace with them a long time and we resolve to continue to do so as long as we can - when they hurt us it is time enough to strike them. It is true they have encroach'd on our Lands, but of this we shall speak to them. If you are so strong Brother, and they but as a weak Boy, why ask our assistance. It is true I am tall and strong but I will reserve my strength to strike those who injure me. If you have so great plenty of Warriors, Powder, Lead and Goods, and they are so few and little of either, be strong and make good use of them. You say their Powder is rotten - We have found it good. You say they are all mad, foolish, wicked, and deceitful - I say you are so and they are wise for you want us to destroy ourselves in your War and they advise us to live in Peace. Their advice we intend to follow.
With several hundred years hindsight, we can read his words and know that his assessments, if correct, were the product of his experiences with colonists held at bay by a distant monarchy. He could not have imagined that the advice of the colonists, to live in peace, would be so short-lived, nor could he have envisioned the wholesale decimation of native peoples, cultures, and land-grabs that would ensue at the hands of new oppressors once these British tyrants were vanquished.
How haunting the British prophesy: their powder is rotten; they are mad, foolish, wicked, and deceitful.
Pushed and pulled from both sides, by colonists and British, Indians began developing internal dissension over the proper course and alliances to form. A Mohawk Indian, Joseph Brant, had accompanied Colonel Guy Johnson to England and concluded Indians would fare best under British rule. After the Battle of Long Island, he courageously crossed through patriot lines to attempt to convince Mohawks, and all of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, to fight against the colonist. However, the Oneida and Tuscarora eventually sided with the patriots, fighting alongside General Herkimer. On August 6, 1777, at the Battle of Oriskany, the Six Nations fought their own civil war, brother against brother, with heavy casualties suffered by the Seneca. The Great Peace achieved through the Iroquois Confederacy was destroyed.
Indians accompanying British General Burgoyne fatefully killed Jane McCrea en route from Canada, contributing to Jefferson's rebuke of the English monarchy in the Declaration of Independence:
endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontier the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions."
Thereafter, the colonists repelled Bergoyne at Freeman's Farm, with the assistance of Oneidas and Tuscaroras. During 1778 and 1779, Iroquois made raids into New York State that spurred George Washington to plan, and General John Sullivan to execute, attacks on Iroquois country, burning already abandoned villages and corn fields. So notorious was Washington's scorched-earth policy that in 1790, a Seneca leader, named Cornplanter, said:
When your army entered the country of the Six Nations we called you Town Destroyer; and to this day when that name is heard our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mothers.
Southward, colonists also pushed, unwelcome, into Cherokee, Choktaw, Creek, and Chickasaw lands. In 1775, Dragging Canoe, a Cherokee Chief, warned the Transylvania Company, which was attempting to acquire "title" to parts of Tennessee and Kentucky, that settlement would "turn the land dark and bloody." An ominous warning, but unheeded, even when British agents cautioned would-be settlers of the risks.
In April of 1776, representatives of the Continental Congress unsuccessfully attempted to convince the Cherokee, and later the Creeks, that they had superseded the British agents; and that Indians should remain distanced from colonial-British disputes. Shortly thereafter, a delegation of Shawnee, Delaware, and Mohawk persuasively argued for British allegiance and resistance against colonial settlers. When colonists attacked, like the Iroquois, the Cherokee withdrew, only to see their crops and homes destroyed by colonial troops. Attacks by the Cherokee prompted Thomas Jefferson to assert:
I hope that the Cherokees will now be driven beyond the Mississippi and that this in future will be declared to the Indians the invariable consequence of their beginning a war. Our contest with Britain is too serious and too great to permit any possibility of avocation from the Indians.
Seeing the sad state of the Cherokee, the Creek refrained from attacking colonial settlers as they pushed further into Indian Country. In 1778, when Savannah, Georgia, fell to the British, the Creek were unaware and uninvolved, due to lack of effective British communication. British Parliament was nonplussed by the meager results of their substantial monetary investments in the southern and northern tribes and by March 1779 these topics hit a feverish pitch in England. In February 1780, British General Campbell's dismissal of Choctaw Warriors, without adequate consideration, led to Spanish de Galvez seizing the port at Mobile. De Galvez next set his sights on Pensacola, but with 2,000 Creeks joining the British, he waited for the Creek to leave. Six weeks later, a British fleet arrived and de Galvez abandoned his attack. When a Spanish fleet arrived in Pensacola in March of 1781, 1,500 British soldiers, 400 Choctaw, and 100 Creek fought fiercely, but the Spanish prevailed on May 8, 1781; Augusta and Savannah soon followed.
Cherokee and Chickasaw negotiated a peace with Americans (those former colonists); Creeks still fought alongside the British; and Choctaws did a little of both. In 1783, the British abandoned Saint Augustine and discovered that many Indians sought to return to England with them, as one Indian said:
If the English mean to abandon the Land, we will accompany them - We cannot take a Virginian or Spaniard by the hand -We cannot look them in the face.
The garrison commandant posited:
The minds of these people appear as much agitated as those of the unhappy Loyalists on the eve of a third evacuation; and however chimerical it may appear to us, they have seriously proposed to abandon their country and accompany us, having made all the world their enemies by their attachment to us.
To be certain, those Indians who fought to the finish with the Brits, against their Indian brothers, would, surely, find no peace in the lands they once called home. Although reprisals by Americans were a possibility, retribution from former tribal allies would be swift, vengeful, and permanent.
When British Parliament crafted the Preliminary Articles of Peace of 1782, the topic of Indians generally and, worse, the existence of cognizable treaties between Britain and Indian nations were mysteriously absent. Lord Walsingham diligently advocated for treaties recognition:
Our treaties with them were solemn and ought to have been binding on our honour.
Lord Shelburne, on the other hand, viewed the broken treaties as less problematic:
...in the present treaty with America, the Indian nations were not abandoned to their enemies; they were remitted to the care of neighbours.
Each time I read these words, it evokes thoughts of Iraq (and prior wars). Sadly, I expect to hear, in the not-too-distant future, some American congress member say, "Iraq was not abandoned; it was remitted to the care of neighbors." How far must the human mind twist to convince itself that it has not "lost a war," as such, but merely acquired "new neighbors."
At the Paris negotiations, even the Spanish representative asserted that the "free and independent" Indian Nations rightfully held the land west of Appalachia to the Mississippi. To no avail. American negotiators rejected Indian sovereignty, claiming the newly-formed United States of America held sole authority to posses and control lands west of the Mississippi.
Thereafter, negotiating with Indians, Americans alleged that, by choosing to aid the British, Indian Nations "lost all their rights ...[and] were a conquered people." In 1784, James Doane advised the New York Governor to disregard Indian Nations as sovereign, to abandon treating with them "to [not] confirm their former ideas of independence they should rather be taught that the public opinion of their importance has long since ceased." Of course, Indian Nations did not accept the asserted primacy of these colonists become Americans; and a new string of battles, between Americans and Indians, were just around the corner. After the Revolution, the British continued to maintain forts and provide assistance and goods to Indians, but no aid for Indians warring against the Brits new "neighbors."
While the Creek negotiated a treaties with the U.S. in 1790, the same year brought American defeat in Maumee Valley. 1791 saw an Indian repulsion of American troops near Fort Wayne. Americans defeated the Northwest Indians at Fallen Timbers in 1794. Rather than picking America as a plum from the tree by defeating the British, Indian Nations proved to be a series of singular conquests for Americans. After the Constitution was crafted and the new government solidified, President George Washington, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, and Secretary of War Henry Knox set new policy toward Indians through the Northwest Ordinance:
The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their land and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made, for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.
Little good did it achieve. While this document sounds good, as do so many subsequent treaties, it had little effect. Settlers moved ever westward, disputes arose, armies were called in, Indian lands were taken by hook and by crook; and, today, there are almost 600 sovereign Indian Nations within the borders of the United States. Most reservations are located, relegated primarily to land settlers disdained.
In conclusion, Washburn posited:
In the end the Indian was the loser. That he would have been a loser even if the King had repressed the rebellion is probable; but his decline would not have been so swift or so bitter.
While fireworks displays graced the horizon tonight and much potato salad and beer were consumed across these great states, few contemplated the underlying origins of the American Revolution. Yes, there was tyranny and oppression from Mother England; and a substantive portion of the tyranny that so ired soon-to-be Americans amounted to nothing more than King George's recalcitrant refusal to allow unbridled colonial expansion into Indian Country.
As I write the words, "King George," I am overwhelmed at the similarities, the repetitions, of historical imperialism. First America, then a string of pearls of faraway lands. We have become the worst of that which we purported to desire relief from. Given the problems acquired through inherited adoption of only certain portions of English governance, while thoughtlessly discarding rather important provisions thereto; and in consideration of our current morass; and in contemplation of the injustices, indecencies, and inequities visited upon all indigenous Americans by colonists and their progeny, I really think we would have all been better off under original Indian rule; and barring that, English Rule. Yes, there, I said it.