Notes on The Indians’ War of Independence

The Proclamation of 1763 and the Frontier Boundary

• The Royal Proclamation of $1763$ ended the French and Indian War and restricted British colonial activity on American Indian lands; it laid out a boundary between colonial settlement and Indian lands. (Captioned image reference in the transcript)
• In the aftermath, Pontiac of the Ottawas, Guyashota of the Senecas, Shingas of the Delawares, and other war chiefs led a multi-tribal assault that destroyed every British fort west of the Appalachians except Detroit, Niagara, and Fort Pitt. This occurred in the context of British garrisons and the absence of British gifts that Indians expected as bonds of alliance.
• The British responded by declaring the Appalachian Mountains the boundary between settlement and Indian lands; this policy alienated land speculators like George Washington who hoped to profit from selling trans-Appalachian lands to settlers.
• The Proclamation was designed to bring order to the frontier but inadvertently set in motion events that culminated in revolution and independence in the future.
• Stockbridge Indians of western Massachusetts joined Washington’s army early in the Revolution, fighting against the redcoats; this demonstrates that Native participation in the war was not simply neutral or passive but varied by group and circumstance.

Indians in the Revolution: Alignment, Neutrality, and Motivations

• In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson described the role of American Indians in the Revolution, contributing to a narrative that placed Indians on the opposite side of liberty from American colonists.
• A key sourced quote from the Declaration: King George III had “endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” This framing placed Indians on the wrong side of liberty and history at the founding moment.
• Despite such framing, indigenous peoples did not uniformly oppose or support the Revolution; many viewed it through the lens of land, sovereignty, and their own definition of freedom.
• By July $1776$, the Stockbridge Indians were among the first to join Washington’s army, while others tried to stay neutral, seeing the conflict as a British civil war rather than a struggle primarily about liberty for Native peoples.
• Those who later sided with the British did so because they perceived the British as a better guarantor of their land and way of life; however, many Indians remained motivated by defense of freedom as they understood it, not simply allegiance to a distant monarch.
• Indian leaders often argued that aggressive American settlement posed a greater threat to land, liberty, and way of life than did a distant king.
• The Revolution is described as an Indian war for independence as well, a claim that situates Native struggles within the broader fight for self-determination and land sovereignty.
• This war for independence among Indians was not the first; about a dozen years earlier, in $1763$, American Indians in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes waged a significant war against British power (Pontiac’s War), signaling that indigenous resistance to imperial expansion had deep roots.

The Cherokee Frontier: Land Loss, Rebellion, and the Chickamauga

• The Cherokees faced long-standing erosion of land in georgia, eastern Tennessee, and western North and South Carolina, with treaties in the late $1760s$ and $1770s$ accelerating land loss.
• Desiring to halt further erosion, young Cherokee men seized the opportunity of the Revolution to drive trespassers off their lands; in $1776$ Cherokee warriors attacked frontier settlements, acting without British support and against the advice of British agents
• American forces retaliated by burning Cherokee towns and forcing chiefs to sue for peace, which entailed ceding more land.
• Dragging Canoe led a faction that migrated to new towns around Chickamauga Creek in southwestern Tennessee, maintaining a contested stance against American expansion.
• American campaigns against the Chickamauga Cherokees sometimes hit peaceful Cherokees, as their towns were interspersed with those of patriarchs who had agreed to peace; this deepened internal divisions.
• The Revolution devastated the Cherokee Nation and left it divided; the Chickamaugas persisted in resistance until 1795.

The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Split: Mohawk–Oneida Alliances and the Ordeal of Oriskany

• The Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois League, comprised the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras; they had long exercised influence in diplomacy and played rival European powers against each other.
• The Revolution shattered the League’s unity as internal factions aligned with different colonial powers.
• Mohawks, led by war chief Joseph Brant and his sister Molly Brant, supported the Crown, influenced by the Irish-trader Sir William Johnson, who acted as a pivotal figure in British–Iroquois relations until his death in $1774$.
• Oneidas leaned toward the colonists, influenced by missionary Samuel Kirkland, a Presbyterian/Congregationalist who supported breaking with the Church of England.
• At the Battle of Oriskany in $1777$, Oneidas fought alongside Americans, while Mohawks and Senecas fought with the British, a division that fractured Haudenosaunee kinship networks and clan systems.
• The war caused widespread displacement: Mohawks lost homes in the Mohawk Valley; Oneidas fled to refugee camps around Schenectady, New York.
• In $1779$, General John Sullivan was sent to conduct a scorched-earth campaign in Iroquois country, burning forty Iroquois towns, destroying orchards, and decimating corn—massive blows to Iroquois socioeconomic structures.
• Refugees sought shelter at British forts such as Niagara, but the Niagara supply line could be blocked in winter due to ice, leading to severe hardship (exposure, starvation, sickness).
• After the war, many Iroquois relocated north of the new international border into Canada, with Joseph Brant and followers settling on lands set aside by the British at the Grand River in Ontario (the genesis of the Six Nations Reserve); others, like Senecas at Tonawanda and Buffalo Creek, remained on ancestral lands but faced new pressures.

The Ohio Valley and the Shawnee, Delawares, and Other Nations

• The Ohio Valley was a multi-tribal homeland re-formed by the eve of the Revolution after earlier, intertribal warfare reduced populations in the seventeenth century.
• Tribes such as the Shawnee, Delawares, Mingos, and others pressed into the region; pioneer expansion by Europeans quickly followed.
• Shawnee resistance to American encroachment in Kentucky was a major issue; they fought in Lord Dunmore’s War (1774) against Virginia.
• The Revolution transformed the Ohio Valley into a fierce war zone where Henry Hamilton (British commander at Detroit) and George Morgan (American agent at Fort Pitt) vied for tribal allegiance.
• Most tribes attempted neutrality, but neutrality was not viable in practice; Cornstalk, a Shawnee leader, counseled neutrality and sought peaceful relations with the Americans, but he was captured under a flag of truce at Fort Randolph and murdered by American militia in $1777$.
• After Cornstalk’s death, many Shawnees allied with the British, who had promised reprisal against American expansion; Nonhelema, Cornstalk’s sister, continued to pursue peace with the Americans.
• Kentucky militias conducted repeated raids into Shawnee villages; many Shawnees migrated west to present-day Missouri (then claimed by Spain), while others moved their villages farther from American assault.
• By the end of the Revolution, most Ohio Indians were concentrated in the northwest, creating a volatile borderland between new United States territory and British-held Canada.
• The Delawares initially sought a defensive alliance with the United States; White Eyes, a Delaware chief, led the Treaty of Fort Pitt in $1778$, the first Indian treaty made by the new nation; however, White Eyes was murdered by American militiamen, who claimed he died of smallpox, devastating Delaware–American relations and driving broader hostilities.
• The Delawares, like the Shawnees, joined the British war effort in retaliation and to defend their homelands, setting the stage for brutal frontier conflicts such as the Gnadenhatten massacre.
• The Gnadenhatten massacre (the “Tents of Grace”) occurred in $1782$ when American militia attacked a Moravian Christian Delaware community, dividing them into three groups (men, women, children) and killing 96; the Delawares later exacted brutal revenge on American captives who fell into their hands.

The End of the Eastern War, the Western War, and the Peace that Followed

• In the East, fighting largely ended after Lord Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown in $1781$, yet in the West, Indian resistance persisted.
• The Peace of Paris in $1783$ recognized American independence and transferred British claims to territory east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes; crucially, Indians were not mentioned in the terms and there were no American Indians at the Peace table.
• Native allies felt betrayed; they had expected that keeping alliances would secure their lands, but the treaty effectively opened lands to American settlement.
• The British in Canada sustained alliances with Indian groups for years after the Revolution, but tribes south of the new border had to negotiate primarily with the United States.
• At the core of American postwar policy was the need to acquire actual title to Indian lands to transform them into “public land” that could be sold to settlers to fund the young republic’s treasury; this was framed as part of Jefferson’s “empire of liberty.”
• The empire’s legitimacy was questioned: who would count as citizens? Would African Americans, women, or Native Americans be included? The Declaration of Independence provided a justification that Indians had fought against American rights and freedoms at the nation’s birth, implying no obligation to include Indians in the body politic or protect Indian lands; yet the same Declaration also labeled Indians as “savages,” which justified a civilizing mission in policy—“civilize” them in exchange for taking their lands.
• The result was a dual assault on lands and cultures: dispossession followed by attempts to assimilate Native peoples into a Euro-American political and cultural order.

After the Revolution: A New Nation, Still at War with Its Promises

• The United States, newly independent, faced the paradox of building a republic on land that had been taken from Native peoples and did so with ongoing resistance from those peoples.
• The postwar era saw continued displacement, treaties, and conflict, as Indians pursued sovereignty and survival in a nation determined to expand westward.
• The narrative closes with the observation that American Indian wars for independence persisted long after 1783, and for some, Native peoples continued to struggle to realize the promise of the Revolution within a constitutional democracy that grew out of a war over land and sovereignty.

Key Figures, Terms, and Places to Recall

• Key figures: Pontiac (Ottawa); Guyashota (Seneca); Shingas (Delaware); Dragging Canoe (Cherokee); Joseph Brant (Mohawk); Molly Brant; Sir William Johnson; Samuel Kirkland; Cornstalk (Shawnee); Nonhelema (Shawnee); White Eyes (Delaware); Daniel Boone; George Morgan; Henry Hamilton; Lord Dunmore; General John Sullivan; General Anthony Wayne.
• Key terms and concepts:
  • Proclamation of $1763$ (boundary setting between colonial expansion and Indian lands)
  • Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) and its internal divisions
  • Oriskany ($1777$) and Sullivan Campaign ($1779$)
  • Treaty of Fort Pitt ($1778$)
  • Gnadenhatten (Massacre) ($1782$)
  • Treaty of Paris ($1783$) and its implications for Indian lands
  • Battle of Fallen Timbers ($1794$) and Treaty of Greenville ($1795$)
  • “Empire of liberty” and the question of citizenship and civilizing missions
• Places: Ohio Valley, Great Lakes, Chickamauga Creek, Chickamauga, Schenectady, Niagara, Grand River (Ontario), Fort Pitt, Detroit, Gnadenhatten, Yorktown, Greenville.
• Major outcomes: land cession, displacement, reshaped borders, redefined sovereignty, and the long arc of Indigenous resistance and accommodation in the United States.

Thematic Takeaways and Reflections

• Creation myths and political rhetoric shaped the founding era: the Declaration’s language helped justify dispossession of Indigenous lands while projecting a universal liberty for some but not all.
• Indigenous nations were not passive participants; they engaged in strategic decisions shaped by land, sovereignty, and survival, often choosing sides based on practical assessments of which power could best secure their homelands.
• The Revolution was multi-front: it was simultaneously a struggle against imperial rules, a fight over land, and a contest for future political status and sovereignty within a rapidly expanding nation.
• The postwar period reveals a tension between ideals of liberty and the realities of territorial expansion, showing why Native nations experienced the revolution as an ongoing struggle for rights and sovereignty, not a completed victory.

Connections to Foundational Principles and Real-World Relevance

• Foundational ideas of sovereignty, liberty, and citizenship are contested in the context of Indigenous nations who maintained complex political systems and land rights prior to and independent of European-American state formation.
• The “civilizing” rationale used by early U.S. leaders reveals ethical and philosophical contradictions in a republic founded on liberty while dispossessing and attempting to assimilate Native peoples.
• The long arc of Indigenous resistance, from Pontiac’s War through the Greenville Treaty and beyond, illustrates how sovereignty is asserted and negotiated across generations, shaping modern debates about tribal nations, land rights, and federal recognition.

Citations and References (as in transcript)

• Calloway, Colin G. The Indians’ War of Independence. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Key dates: $1763$, $1776$, $1777$, $1778$, $1779$, $1781$, $1782$, $1783$, $1794$, $1795$.
• Related themes: American Revolution, Indian lands, treaty diplomacy, frontier warfare, and the assimilation policies that followed.