Early Westward Migration & the Native American Resistance Presentation created by Robert Martinez Primary Content Source: America’s History (Henretta, Brody, Dumenil) Images as cited.

In the Treaty of Paris of 1783, Great Britain relinquished claims to the trans-Appalachian region.

Many white Americans wanted to destroy native communities and even the native people themselves.

“Cut up every Indian Cornfield and burn every Indian town,” proclaimed William Henry Drayton, a congressman from South Carolina, so that their “nation be extirpated and other lands become the property of the public.” etc.usf.edu

Other leaders, including Henry Knox, Secretary of War, favored assimilating the Indians into Euro-American society. Knox proposed the division of commonly held tribal lands among individual Indian families, who would become citizens in the various states. Henry Knox Secretary of War

The major struggle between Indians and whites centered on land. Invoking the Treaty of Paris and classifying Britain’s Indian allies as conquered peoples, the U.S. government asserted its ownership of the trans-Appalachian west.

Native Americans rejected that claim, insisting that they had not signed the Treaty of Paris treaty and had not been conquered.

Brushing aside those arguments, the U.S. commissioners threatened military action to force the pro-British Iroquois peoples, the Mohawks, and Senecas, to relinquish much of their land in New York and Pennsylvania in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784). nativeamericanencyclopedia....

New York officials and land speculators used liquor and bribes to take title to millions of additional acres, confining the once powerful Iroquois to relatively small tribal reservations.

In 1785, U.S. negotiators persuaded the Chippewas, Delawares, Wyandots, and Ottawas, to sign away most of the future state of Ohio. The tribes quickly recanted the agreements, claiming they were made under duress.

To defend their lands, they joined the Shawnee, Miami, and Potawatomi peoples in the Western Confederacy. Led by Miami chief Little Turtle, confederacy warriors crushed U.S. forces sent by President Washington in tahsmithtown.blogspot.comwww.rainsongmusic.com

Fearing an alliance between the Western Confederacy and the British in Canada, Washington ordered a new expedition. In 1794, they defeated the Indians in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, but the resistance continued.

In the Treaty of Greenville (1795), the U.S. acknowledged Indian ownership of land; in return, the Indian peoples ceded most of Ohio and various lands along the Great Lakes, including Detroit and the future site of Chicago.

The members of the Western Confederacy also agreed to place themselves “under the protection of the United States.”

These U.S. advances prompted Britain to change its policies in North America. It reduced its trade with the Indians and, following Jay’s Treaty, began to remove its military garrisons from the region.

The Greenville Treaty sparked a wave of white migration. By 1805, Ohio, a state of just two years, had more than 100,000 residents.

Thousands more farm families moved into the future states of Indiana and Illinois, igniting new conflicts with native peoples over land and hunting rights.

The U.S. government encouraged Native Americans to assimilate into white society. The goal was to make the Indian “a farmer, a citizen of the United States, and a Christian.”

But most Indians rejected assimilation choosing to embrace their ancestral values.

To preserve their traditional cultures, many Indian communities expelled white missionaries and forced Christianized Indians to participate in tribal rites.

Among the Senecas, the Indian prophet Handsome Lake encouraged traditional animistic ceremonies that gave thanks to the sun, the earth, water, plants, and animals.

But he also included some Christian elements to his teachings, the concepts of heaven and hell, for example, to deter his followers from alcohol, gambling, and witchcraft.

Handsome Lake’s doctrines divided the tribe into hostile factions. More conservative Senecas, led by Chief Red Jacket, condemned Indians who accepted white ways and demanded a return to ancestral customs. Chief Red Jacket

Most Indians rejected the efforts of American missionaries to turn warriors into farmers and women into domestic helpmates.

Native American resistance slowed the advance of white farmers and planters but did not stop it.