Everyday Life in Indian Country

• Semi-sedentary communities– Planting grounds– Winter hunting grounds

• Trade

• Warfare

• Gendered division of labor

Everyday Life in Colonial America

• Indians facilitate trade– Furs for European manufactured goods

• Indians provide vital labor– Harvest workers

– Basket, pottery, and broom makers

• Many Indian communities contain Europeans– Intermarriage of traders and Indian women

– European captives: 1600 from New England alone

Indians vs Europeans

• Authority: Hierarchy and consent; male

• Religion: Animism, pantheism, but supreme creator deity

• Gender: women’s and men’s roles

• Childrearing practices: Indians less restrictive, punitive

• Authority: Hierarchy and consent; male

• Religion: Christianity• Gender: Men’s and

women’s spheres• Childrearing practices:

More restrictive, but varied

Indians and the American Revolution

The Aftermath of the French and Indian War (7 Years’ War)

• Indians lost ability to play French and English off against each other– Consequences:

• Expansion of English settlement

• Decline in traditional gift-giving, observance of protocols

• "Reason and Rhetoric will fall to the Ground unless supported by Strouds and Duffells. Liberality is alone with Indians true Eloquence without which Demosthenes and Cicero or the more modern orators Burke and Barre might harangue in vain."

• Growth of English perception of Indians as savage

The Proclamation Line of 1763

• English colonists ignored it– Population of British North America doubled

every 25 years, up 400% between 1700 and 1750.

– 50,000 whites west of Appalachians by 1775.

What is happening elsewhere?

• First Spanish mission established in California, 1769

• Smallpox epidemic breaks out in Mexico City in 1779, spreads to Canada by 1783

• Active Indian slave trade among Spanish, Apache, Utes, Comanches; Carolina slave trade active

• Active international trade in Northwest, involving Spain, England, France, Russia, China

The Revolutionary War

• “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has 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.”– Declaration of Independence, 1776

The Quest for Neutrality

• “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.”– Continental Congress, 1775

Why Side with the British?:A rational decision

• Familiarity with English officials (Indian Superintendants, such as Sir William Johnson)

• English officials invested heavily in gift-giving, to compete with French– Parliament allowed 75,000 pounds in goods for

southern superintendancy to maintain alliance

Impact of War

• Scattering of communities

• Divisions within communities– War chiefs vs civil chiefs– Anglo vs American

• Break-up of Great League of the Iroquois– Oneida and Tuscarora - American– Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga - British

• Loss of traditional and ceremonial knowledge– “Great Part of our ancient Customs &

Ceremonies have, thro’ the Loss of Many of our principal men during the War, been neglected & forgotten, so that we cannot go through the whole with our ancient Propriety.”

• Cayuga leader Kingageghta, 1789

Social impact of Revolution

• Population loss from war, disease, famine, migration– Up to 50% among Iroquois

• Social problems: demoralization– Suicide– Alcoholism

Peace of 1783 leaves out Indians

• “Your Fathers the English have made Peace with us for themselves, but forgot you their Children, who Fought with them, and neglected you like Bastards.”– American Major Wall to Shawnees during

prisoner exchange in 1783

• The territory west of the Appalachians to the Mississippi, which England ceded to the American Colonies after the Revolutionary War, belonged to "free and independent nations of Indians, and you have no right to it." – Conde de Aranda, Spanish representative to the

Treaty of Paris negotiation, 1783

Aftermath of American Revolution

• Accelerated Indian land loss

The Trouble with Treaties

• 1780s - Indian/settler conflicts continue• 1784 - Treaty of Fort Stanwix (second)

– U.S. abandons land by conquest argument. – Iroquois cede large portions of land

• 1785 - Treaty of Fort McIntosh– Delawares, Wynadots (Hurons), Miamis, others cede land

• 1786 - Treaty of Fort Finney– Shawnees cede land

• 1786 - Indian Confederation formed:– Demand that Ohio River remain boundary between U.S. and Indian

land

• 1787 - Northwest Ordinance– Promises justice to Indians– Includes provisions for Ohio Country settlements to become states 1790-

91 - Indian victories over American forces at Fort Wayne, Maumee Valley

• 1790-91 - Indian victories over US at Fort Wayne, Maumee Valley

• 1793 - Failed negotiations over Ohio Country with US• 1794 - American victory over Indians at Battle of Fallen

Timbers• 1795 - Treaty of Greenville: Indians cede most of Ohio Valley

to US

• “Your people settle much Faster on our Lands after a Treaty than before.”– Old Tassel of the Cherokees to Joseph Martin,

1785

Indian Responses

• Conservatives: Return to old ways• Progressives: Adopt white ways

– Cherokee attempts

• Dilemma: "How to imitate superior alien customs while reasserting the integrity of the ancient way of life.”– Anthony F. C. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of

the Seneca

• Revitalization movements

Revitalization Movements

Indian Removal

• “[I would be pleased] to see the good and influential individuals among them [the Indians] run into debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individual can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands.”– Thomas Jefferson, 1803

• Unlike British, and French before them, “The United States looked to build an empire on Indian land, not on Indian trade, and that required the Indians’ removal.”– Colin Calloway

Persistence