Native America-White Relations—U.S., 1775-1830

Tribes affected: Pantribal

Significance: Following the Declaration of Independence, the fledgling United States was confronted with designing an Indian policy that combined two contradictory objectives: protecting Indians while aiding westward movement of white settlers

During the two centuries of colonization prior to American independence, Indians had been ineffectual in halting the encroachment of white settlers on tribal lands. Disease, demoralization, alcohol addiction, and wars had tragically diminished native populations. Moreover, Indians lost their principal ally as the French suffered defeat in the French and Indian War (1754-1763), thereafter subjecting Indians to their British enemies as well as to the virtually unchecked and seemingly relentless land hunger of English settlers.

American Revolution

Both the Americans and the British initially sought to ensure Indian neutrality during the American Revolutionary War, for both sides claimed to fear Indian “savagery” in battle. Their policies of neutrality were quickly abandoned, however, as both the Americans and the British sought aid from the powerful Indians still remaining on their eastern tribal lands. The turning point occurred in 1776 as the Cherokees, angered by incessant American intrusions, launched a series of raids on American settlements. Believing them to have been armed by the British, Congress accordingly authorized General Griffith Rutherford to undertake a retaliatory strike against the Cherokees. Rutherford and his troops subsequently rampaged through Cherokee land, razing thirty-six Indian villages, including their crops and stores. The Cherokee War served as a deterrent against further southern Indian involvement in the revolution, as other tribes feared similar retribution would be visited upon them should they elect to participate.

A similar fate befell the powerful Iroquois of New York, whose alliance was courted by both the Americans and the British. A majority of the Iroquois Confederacy joined the British, who sponsored a series of Iroquois attacks intending to sever American supply lines through New York’s Mohawk Valley. In response, American commander-in-chief George Washington authorized General John Sullivan to lead a sizable punitive expedition against the Iroquois in 1779. Sullivan’s troops mercilessly burned and pillaged, destroying twenty-eight Iroquois villages, along with their stores and crops. Economically the Iroquois never recovered from the Sullivan campaign. In addition, the centuries-old Iroquois Confederacy was destroyed when some Tuscaroras and Oneidas, encouraged by the influential missionaries Eleazar Wheelock and Samuel Kirkland, joined the Patriot cause against the British.

During the revolution most Indians ultimately allied themselves with the British, and at war’s end they were once again at the mercy of their enemies; this time, however, their enemies were the Americans.

Indian Rebellions

From the initial Powhatan rebellion in Virginia in 1622 through the pantribal alliance of Pontiac in 1763, Indian tribes had endeavored to safeguard their land rights as the white population advanced at an alarming rate. After the American Revolution, aided by government policy which treated Indian lands as forfeit because of the Indian and British alliance, Americans viewed their victory as license for uninhibited westward expansion. In the north, Americans made no distinction between Patriot and Loyalist Indians; all Indian land was subject to confiscation. Thus, during the Confederation period (in which the U.S. government was operating under the Articles of Confederation), Indians were forced to sign treaties which forfeited their land titles. The Confederation government proved incapable of enforcing treaties that failed when challenged by Indian resistance. In the south, federal treaties were negotiated for Indian protection. Those treaties were not upheld either. One problem was that some southern states, notably Georgia, repudiated Confederation authority. As American settlers vigorously resumed their unremitting westward drive, Indians responded with rebellions.

With British defeat in 1783, steadily increasing numbers of settlers moved into the Old Northwest territory (around the Great Lakes). United by a war chief, Little Turtle, Indians of that region participated in numerous raids on white settlers between 1783 and 1790. Although President George Washington in 1790 ordered armed resistance, Indian raids continued nearly unimpeded. In 1794, a force of three thousand rigorously drilled and highly disciplined troops under the command of General “Mad Anthony” Wayne earned a decisive victory against Little Turtle at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The following year, Indians signed the Treaty of Fort Greenville, ceding virtually all of their lands in the Northwest Territory.

The spirit of rebellion persisted, however; in the early 1800’s, the visionary Shawnee leader Tecumseh organized a pan-Indian alliance and sought to create a united Indian confederation. He traveled from north to south (from New York to Florida) and westward to present-day Iowa seeking allies among Indian tribes. His resistance was aborted, however, when his brother, spiritual leader Tenskwatawa (the Shawnee Prophet), led a premature, ill-fated attack on November 11, 1811, against the forces of William Henry Harrison at Tippecanoe. His warriors were defeated at the Battle of Tippecanoe, resulting in disillusionment and then defections from the alliance. Many tribes pursued rebellions in their own territories, but Tecumseh was thereafter unable to organize a united Indian front. During the War of 1812, he joined forces with the British, proving himself a capable ally. Several other tribes that Tecumseh had courted, however, chose to ally with the Americans.

In the south, Indians invoked Spanish aid against American encroachments. With General Andrew Jackson’s victory against the Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, March 27, 1814, however, expectations of an ultimate Indian victory were extinguished.

Trade

In the aftermath of Little Turtle’s War, President Washington and his secretary of war, Henry Knox, both principled men, sought a policy to ensure peace between Indians and the federal government. To that end, on April 18, 1796, Congress established the “factory system” for the regulation of Indian trade. It was designed to make peace rather than to generate profit. Government trading posts, known as factories, were designated across the frontier as centers for Indian trade. At the government-regulated factories, Indians were assured equitable trade. The factory system persisted until 1822 but failed to withstand the machinations of independent and frequently dishonest American and British Canadian traders.

After the War of 1812, additional measures known as the Trade and Intercourse Acts were enacted to regulate trade and establish a licensing system. These laws were designed to safeguard Indian lands and to provide for the extradition of criminals and the punishment of crimes committed by whites on Indian land. They formed the basis for the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834.

Civilization

By 1819, through the efforts of the humanitarian reformer Thomas L. McKenney, aided by missionaries’ lobbying of the federal government, a new federal Indian policy was initiated. The goal, which was to be accomplished through education, was the assimilation of Indians through Christianization and introduction to white agricultural techniques. Under the Civilization Act, passed in 1819, which allocated ten thousand dollars for establishing schools on Indian tribal lands, Indians were to be taught American culture. Theoretically, civilization would result in the assimilation of Indians into white America, thereby eliminating threats of violence as well as freeing Indian land for white usage. Most Indians, however, continued to resist white culture, preferring to retain their tribal traditions. The minority who were indoctrinated as youths faced racial prejudice if they attempted to live as members of white society.

In the 1820’s American encroachment on Indian lands was virtually uninhibited, and regulation of Indian trade, despite the best intentions embodied in the factory system and the Trade and Intercourse Acts, was largely ineffectual. Furthermore, many, including state officials, found assimilation through acculturation intolerably slow. Consequently, federal Indian policy evolved toward a final resolution to the “Indian problem” in the form of relocation of Indians to the newly created Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

Removal

Indian removal, or the exchange by treaty of eastern land for lands west of the Mississippi, had several proponents, including humanitarian reformers concerned with safeguarding Indian culture through resettlement beyond the pale of white America, thereby relieving pressures on Indian tribal lands. Others were motivated by the base expectation of settlement on rich Indian lands. Georgia, coveting the sizable territory of the Cherokee Nation, eventually forced the issue to resolution. Ironically, the Cherokee Nation had become the most “civilized” of the Indian tribes, having adopted sedentary agriculture, a Cherokee syllabary, a written constitution, and a legal system patterned after that of the United States.

The spread of cotton agriculture and the discovery of gold on Cherokee lands, as well as the specter of a foreign nation within the state’s boundaries, lent impetus to Georgia’s eagerness to annex Indian lands. After the passage of Georgia’s statutes extending the state’s laws to the Cherokee Nation and disallowing Cherokee land claims, the Cherokee Nation appealed to the United States Congress. Meantime, President Andrew Jackson, elected in 1828, proved unsympathetic to Indian protests. He initiated, and saw to fruition, plans for Indian removal.

On May 28, 1830, Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act, by which all eastern Indians were to exchange their ancestral lands for land in the new trans-Mississippi Indian territory. Land exchanges were intended to be peaceably negotiated with Indian tribes. In practice, however, removal was frequently enforced against protesting Indians through both legal and illegal methods. Although 90 percent of the Cherokees resisted removal, for example, the intractable Jackson negotiated a removal treaty with a friendly minority faction. The Cherokee Nation, although disavowing this patently spurious document, was nevertheless bound to it and forced to move westward.

Indian removal eliminated the last obstacles to white expansion east of the Mississippi River. While the benefits to the states were obvious, removal for the eastern Indians was disastrous. Their new lands, often marginal and geographically dissimilar to their homelands, rendered their hunting and agricultural practices obsolete. A number of tribes were moved several times before their final settlement; others were located on land already inhabited by hostile tribes. Moreover, relentless white pressures for Indian lands continued as American settlers pushed their settlements ever farther westward. The process of dispossession begun early in the seventeenth century continued unabated until the end of the nineteenth century.

Bibliography

Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1972. An excellent, highly detailed account of the Iroquois during the American Revolution.

O’Donnell, James H. Southern Indians in the American Revolution. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973. Focusing on the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Choctaws, O’Donnell describes the attitudes of both the British and the Americans toward their Indian allies and Indian enemies. Indexed, annotated, and with bibliography.

Prucha, Francis Paul. “Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy: A Reassessment.” Journal of American History 56, no. 3 (1969): 527-539. A discussion of Jackson’s Indian policy from a sympathetic viewpoint, describing the pressures leading to Indian removal.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. 2 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. An extensive, fully annotated, indexed, and illustrated history of Indian-white relations from the founding of the United States to the 1980’s by one of the premier authorities on Indian-white relations.

Satz, Ronald N. American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975. A thorough treatment of Andrew Jackson and Indian removal. Annotated, indexed, with bibliography.

Tyler, S. Lyman. A History of Indian Policy. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973. A brief chronological guide to Indian policy. Illustrated, containing maps, time lines, and bibliography.

Viola, Herman J. Thomas L. McKenney: Architect of America’s Early Indian Policy, 1816-1830. Chicago: Sage Books, 1974. Informative biography of McKenney, superintendent of Indian trade and the first director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and description of his Indian policy under the administrations of presidents James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson. Illustrated and indexed. Bibliography.

Washburn, Wilcomb E., ed. History of Indian-White Relations. Vol. 4 in Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. An invaluable reference source containing articles on all aspects of Indian-white relations. Includes biographical dictionary. Fully annotated. Bibliography and illustrations.