Internet Resources
- The Indians’ War of IndependenceIn the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson clearly described the role of American Indians in the American Revolution. In addition to his other oppressive acts, 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.” Inscribed in the founding document of the United States, almost a sacred text, Jefferson’s words placed Indians on the wrong side of the struggle for liberty and the wrong side of history from the very beginning of the Revolution.
- Revolutionary Limits: Native AmericansWhile the previous explorations of African American and white female experience suggest both the gains and limitations produced in the Revolutionary Era, from the perspective of almost all NATIVE AMERICANS the American Revolution was an unmitigated disaster.
- Roles of Native Americans During the RevolutionThe Revolutionary War did not only determine the future of the American colonies, but it also shaped the future of the Native peoples who lived in and around them. Native Americans were not passive observers in the conflict. While most Native communities tried to remain neutral in the fighting between the Crown and its colonists, as the war continued many of them had to make difficult decisions about how and when to support one side or the other.
- When Native Americans Briefly Won Back Their LandA proclamation by King George III set the stage for Native American rights—and the eventual loss of most tribal lands.
Streaming Media
- The American Revolution through Native EyesExamine three ways Native Americans experienced the American Revolution: as allies, as participants in their own civil wars, and as neutral parties. For many Native Americans, the resolution of the American Revolution held little meaning: There would be no liberty for them under the rule of the colonists or the Crown.
Perspectives
Native Americans in the American Revolution
This valuable book provides a succinct, readable account of an oft-neglected topic in the historiography of the American Revolution: the role of Native Americans in the Revolution's outbreak, progress, and conclusion. There has not been an all-encompassing narrative of the Native American experience during the American Revolutionary War period--until now. Native Americans in the American Revolution: How the War Divided, Devastated, and Transformed the Early American Indian World fills that gap in the literature, provides full coverage of the Revolution's effects on Native Americans, and details how Native Americans were critical to the Revolution's outbreak, its progress, and its conclusion. The work covers the experiences of specific Native American groups such as the Abenaki, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Delaware, Iroquois, Seminole, and Shawnee peoples with information presented by chronological period and geographic area. The first part of the book examines the effects of the Imperial Crisis of the 1760s and early 1770s on Native peoples in the Northern colonies, Southern colonies, and Ohio Valley respectively. The second section focuses on the effects of the Revolutionary War itself on these three regions during the years of ongoing conflict, and the final section concentrates on the postwar years. Adds the Native American perspective to the reader's understanding of the American Revolution, a critical aspect of this period in history that is rarely covered Supplies a synthesis of the best current and past work on the topic of Native Americans in the American Revolution that will be accessible to general readers as well as undergraduate and graduate-level students Shows how the struggle over the definition and utilization of Native American identity--an issue that was initiated with the American Revolution--is still ongoing for American Indians
The Indian World of George Washington
A biography of America's founding father and those on whose land he based the nation's futureGeorge Washington dominates the narrative of the nation's birth, yet American history has largely forgotten what he knew: that the country's fate depended less on grand rhetorical statements of independence and self-governance than on land - Indian land. While other histories have overlooked thecentral importance of Indian power during the country's formative years, Colin G. Calloway here gives Native American leaders their due, revealing the relationship between the man who rose to become the most powerful figure in his country and the Native tribes whose dominion he usurped.In this sweeping new biography, Calloway uses the prism of Washington's life to bring focus to the great Native leaders of his time - Shingas, Tanaghrisson, Bloody Fellow, Joseph Brant, Red Jacket, Little Turtle - and the tribes they represented: the Iroquois Confederacy, Lenape, Miami, Creek,Delaware; in the process, he returns them to their rightful place in the story of America's founding. The Indian World of George Washington spans decades of Native American leaders' interaction with Washington, from his early days as surveyor of Indian lands, to his military career against both theFrench and the British, to his presidency, when he dealt with Native Americans as a head of state would with a foreign power, using every means of diplomacy and persuasion to fulfill the new republic's destiny by appropriating their land. By the end of his life, Washington knew more than anyone elsein America about the frontier and its significance to the future of his country.The Indian World of George Washington offers a fresh portrait of the most revered American and the Native Americans whose story has been only partially told. Calloway's biography invites us to look again at the story of America's beginnings and see the country in a whole new light.
This Land Is Their Land
Ahead of the 400th Anniversary of the first Thanksgiving, a new look at the Plymouth colony's founding events, told for the first time from the perspective of the Wampanoag natives. In March 1621, when Plymouth's survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief) Ousamequin (Massasoit) and Plymouth's governor John Carver declared their people's friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousmaequin and ninety of his men then visited Plymouth for the "First Thanksgiving." The treaty remained operative until King Philip's War in 1675, when fifty years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end. 400 years after that famous meal, historian David J. Silverman sheds a profound new light on the events that led to the creation, and bloody dissolution, of this alliance. From the vantage of the Wampanoag Indians, Silverman deepens the narrative to consider tensions that developed well before 1620 and lasted long after the devastating war tracing the Wampanoags' ongoing struggle for self-determination up to this very day. This unsettling history reveals why some modern Native people hold a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving, a holiday which celebrates a myth of colonialism and white proprietorship of the United States. No Reason to Give Thanks shows that it is time to rethink how we, as a pluralistic nation, tell the history of Thanksgiving.
Remaking the British Atlantic
Remaking the British Atlantic focuses on a crucial phase in the history of British-American relations: the first ten years of American Independence. These set the pattern for some years to come. On the one hand, there was to be no effective political rapprochement after rebellion and war.Mainstream British opinion was little influenced by the failure to subdue the revolt or by the emergence of a new America, for which they mostly felt distain. What were taken to be the virtues of the British constitution were confidently reasserted and there was little inclination either todisengage from empire or to manage it in different ways, as is shown in chapters dealing with Britain's continuing imperial commitments around the Atlantic. For their part, many Americans defined the new order that they were seeking to establish by their rejection of what they took to be the abusesof contemporary Britain. On the other hand, neither the trauma of war nor the failure to create harmonious political relations could prevent the re-establishment of the very close links that had spanned the pre-war Atlantic, locking people on both sides of it into close connections with one another.Many British migrants still went to America. Britain remained America's dominant trading partner. American tastes and the intellectual life of the new republic continued to be largely reflections of British tastes and ideas. America and Britain were too important for too many people in too many waysfor political alienation to keep them apart.
Native American Heritage Topic Guide
This guide covers the history and culture of Native American tribes. This guide is an ongoing project. As such, additional content will be added throughout the academic year.