Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

Racial animus between Euro-Americans and Indigenous people began to grow around 1763. It was in that year that the French were driven from control in North America following the Seven Years’ War, which led to a “decade-long period of vengeance killings” (203).

Meanwhile, the religious doctrine of Separate Creation gained acceptance among many Indigenous peoples in the 18th through the 19th centuries. It held that God had created Indigenous, Black, and white people as “distinct from one another and purposely placed them on distinct continents” (181). As a result of this doctrine, nativist sentiment grew: racial categories hardened, and hatred of the “other” increased. Among both Indigenous and white groups, there arose ethnic cleansing movements to purge the “other” from the continent.

On the Indigenous side, the Ottawa leader Pontiac preached racial separatism and led a coalition to lay siege to Detroit in the hopes of routing the British and returning the French to power—perhaps the first step in their gaining full independence. Similar Indigenous campaigns of racial cleansing in which white settlers were brutally slaughtered occurred in Indiana and the Ohio Country. With the Treaty of Paris ending any hopes of the French returning, Pontiac and his troops withdrew, and his war reached a stalemate.

On the Euro-American side, the Paxton Boys of Pennsylvania, in reaction to the violent reprisals following the French and Indian War, came to believe that Indigenous people should not be permitted to share the land with whites. They carried out lynchings in Indigenous villages and marched to Philadelphia, where they threatened to attack members of the Moravian people harbored there, only to be turned back by a delegation of citizens that included Benjamin Franklin. The Paxton cause eventually died out when Quaker allies of Franklin gained control of the Pennsylvania legislature.

The nativist programs of both Pontiac and the Paxton Boys failed to convince large numbers of people on their respective sides. Pontiac’s movement came to an end when he was stealthily executed on the order of a local band council.

The British colonial government intervened in the racial strife, creating policies that preserved hope of peaceful coexistence between the Indigenous and colonist populations. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 redrew boundaries between Indigenous and European areas, while the Quebec Act of 1774 designated territory near the Ohio River as part of the province of Quebec, a policy that proved unwelcome to white land speculators, many of whom were veterans of the Seven Years’ War.

These policies “assumed a central place among the grievances that alienated most Euro-Americans from the British crown” (216) in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War. Indeed, the British policy of keeping Indigenous lands from settlement by colonists was among the complaints listed in the Declaration of Independence. For Indigenous Americans, however, it was not always clear which side of the growing conflict to support. Various communities allied with the British or the rebels, or remained neutral, although this last position became “increasingly untenable.”

After the Revolution, Britain transferred a large swath of frontier territory to the new nation without regard to Indigenous land claims, while US commissioners grabbed Indigenous land in Western New York, Pennsylvania, and Eastern Ohio. In 1794, Jay’s Treaty required British withdrawal from western posts, and in 1795, the Treaty of Greensville forced Indigenous peoples to yield most of Ohio to the US.

During George Washington’s presidency, the federal government revived old protocols of respect and protection toward Indigenous peoples, but subsequent administrations adopted a program of forced assimilation, pressuring Indigenous groups to adopt Euro-American modes of agriculture, hunting, and property ownership. After 1800, “aggressive white squatters” (228) began to expel Indigenous inhabitants from their lands on dubious pretexts.

In response to these developments, a new wave of Indigenous nativism spread, especially as preached by the prophets Tenskwatawa, Tecumseh, and Hillis Hadjo. They advocated total separatism from white communities and persecuted Indigenous individuals who pursued an accommodationist line. The racial conflicts culminated in the Battle of Tippecanoe, in which Indigenous territorial governor William Henry Harrison faced off with and defeated Indigenous forces led by Tenskwatawa. Meanwhile, British alliances with many Indigenous tribes were among the factors leading the US to declare war on Britain in the War of 1812.

After the war, Tennessee militia leader Andrew Jackson ignored the terms of the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 and restored lands to Britain’s Indigenous allies. Both as major general and later as president, Jackson transferred millions of acres of land from Indigenous communities to white ones, holding that Indigenous people were “subjects of the United States” (234) and that the government was entitled to occupy and possess their territory. This transfer of land involved the forced removal of southeastern Indigenous peoples westward in what is known as the Trail of Tears.

John Logan of the Mingo people emerged briefly as a symbolic figure whose experience represented this widespread tragedy. He lived in peace with the whites until some of them murdered his family, after which he spiraled into a life of anger, vengeance, and alcoholism. Logan left a legacy in Logan’s Lament, a moving expression of the tragedy of racial hatred that was studied for generations by American schoolchildren for its rhetorical power.