Once the Revolution was over, Americans immediately began to expand west, but the Native Americans who lived in these areas were not ready to give up their lands. They had sided with the British, but it was not their war, and they did not lose the war. Colonists saw the lands west of the Appalachians as unoccupied territory that was available to colonize as they saw fit. They did not see any reason to treat the Native Americans with any respect. This, of course, created a great deal of instability in the West, or on the "frontier," as it was called.
Read the information below and take notes on the Native American resilience in the West.
Rebels escort a tarred-and-feathered tax collector from his burning home during the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania in 1794.
Hamilton’s taxes led to rebellion in western Pennsylvania. The farmers were angry over having to pay a special tax on the whiskey they made from surplus corn. In the backcountry, most farmers lived by bartering, exchanging whiskey and other items they produced for goods they needed. They rarely had cash. How could they pay a tax on whiskey? The farmers’ resistance was mostly peaceful, until July 1794, when federal officers stepped up efforts to collect the tax. Then a large mob of people armed with swords, guns, and pitchforks attacked tax collectors and burned down buildings.
The armed protest, called the Whiskey Rebellion, alarmed government leaders. President Washington and his advisers decided to crush the challenge. The rebellion collapsed as soon as the army crossed the Appalachian Mountains. By his action, Washington served notice to those who opposed government actions. If citizens wished to change the law, they had to do so peacefully, through constitutional means. Government would use force when necessary to maintain the social order.
A map of the states and territories of the United States from August 1789 to 1790. On August 7, 1789, the Northwest Territory was organized. On May 26, 1790, the Territory South of the Ohio River (Southwest Territory) was organized.
The new government faced difficult problems in the West. The Native Americans who lived between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River denied that the United States had any authority over them. On many occasions, Native Americans turned to Britain and Spain to help them in their cause. Both countries welcomed the opportunity to prevent American settlement of the region. Washington worried about European interest in the Northwest Territory. He hoped that signing treaties with the Native American tribes in the area would lessen the influence of the British and Spanish. American settlers ignored the treaties and continued to move onto lands promised to the Native Americans. Fighting broke out between the two groups.
Although the Iroquois and Cherokee were still suffering from their alliances with the British during the Revolutionary War, other more western groups of Native Americans spurred a collective native opposition to the increasing threat from the American republic. Native groups north of the Ohio River had an even stronger ally from British Canada. By 1790, many of these native nations formed a broad Western Confederacy to defend themselves from American settlement. Raids by Little Turtle of the Miami and Chief Blue Jacket of the Shawnee scored major victories that included defeating U.S. military forces in 1790 and 1791.
Washington sent an army under General Arthur St. Clair to restore order in the Northwest Territory. In November 1791, St. Clair’s forces were badly beaten by Little Turtle, chief of the Miami people. More than 600 American soldiers died in a battle by the Wabash River. Many Americans believed that an alliance with France would enable them to defeat the combined forces of the British, Spanish, and Native Americans in the West. The British, who still had forts in the region, wanted to hold on to the profitable fur trade. The possibility of French involvement in the region pushed the British to make a bold bid for control of the West. In 1794, the British government urged Native Americans to destroy American settlements west of the Appalachians. The British also began building a new fort in Ohio.
The Battle of Fallen Timbers by R. F. Zogbaum, from Harper's Magazine, 1896.
The Native Americans demanded that all settlers north of the Ohio River leave the territory. Washington sent another army headed by Anthony Wayne, a former Revolutionary War general, to challenge their demands. In August 1794. his army defeated over 1,000 Native Americans under Blue Jacket at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, near present-day Toledo, Ohio. The Battle of Fallen Timbers crushed the Native Americans’ hopes of keeping their land.
In the Treaty of Greenville (1795), the Native Americans agreed to surrender most of the land in present-day Ohio. However, the Western Confederacy remained intact, and the U.S. acknowledged Native American land ownership and renounced its claim to land through the right of conquest. It also bound them not to make alliances with other powers, specifically the British. As far as western native groups were concerned, the Revolutionary War had only really come to an end with the treaty in 1795.
