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Background
Among the Acts of Parliament denounced by the Patriots as Intolerable Acts were the Proclamation of 1763, which forbade Anglo-American settlement west of the Appalachians; and the Quebec Act of 1774, which made provision for the extension of Québec's borders to the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Together, these acts implicitly restored the balance of power between French Canadians, Native Americans, and the imperial Crown that had existed prior to the Seven Years' War. Anglo-American settlers, particularly those already west of the Appalachians, saw these acts as a betrayal of their interests to those of Native Americans. At the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, the British sought a compromise by shifting the Proclamation line westward. Settlers under Daniel Boone and others continued to establish themselves in what is now Kentucky and made war on the Shawnee, Delaware, Huron, and other nations. In response to the escalating violence, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, led a militia expedition into the frontier in 1774, defeating the Native Americans at the battle of Point Pleasant and forcing them to accept the Ohio river as the boundary between themselves and Virginia. See Dunmore's War
Most Native Americans sided against the United States, as they were bound by treaty to the British Crown and in any case threatened by Anglo-American settlement for control of their lands. The British thus benefited from Native assistance along the frontier, from the Cherokees of North Carolina to the Micmacs of New England. Secure in these Native alliances, the British retained such Loyalist garrisons as Fort Frontenac, Fort Niagara, Detroit, Fort St Joseph, and Fort Michilimackinac. From here, the British were able to equip and trade with their network of Great Lakes allies. Native Americans staged raids on Patriot settlements in New York, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
Iroquois country
The rising fortunes of the Patriots at Saratoga brought bitter division to the Iroquois Confederacy. The Oneidas and many Tuscaroras, believing a US victory inevitable, chose to join with the Patriots, thus plunging the League into civil war. The council fire of the League was extinguished in June of 1777, and the Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga and Cayuga nations entered the war on the side of the British Crown, with Joseph Brant Thayendenegea as their main commander.
Among the Iroquois attacks on US targets were the Wyoming Valley and Cherry Valley massacres of 1778. These massacres provoked outrage among colonists, and in retaliation General John Sullivan led a large force into western New York during the summer of 1779. On the 29th of August he inflicted a crushing defeat on the Iroquois at Newtown, on the site of the present Elmira. In addition several Indian villages and the crops of the Indians were destroyed in the lake region of western New York. See Sullivan Expedition
Ohio Country
The Shawnee diplomat Cornstalk, who had counselled neutrality towards the United States, was murdered by US soldiers in the autumn of 1777 whilst on a mission to Fort Randolph in what is now Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
The Patriots attacked the Native American alliance in 1778-79 under George Rogers Clark. With a company of volunteers under the authority of the state of Virginia, Clark captured Kaskaskia, the chief post in the Illinois country, on the 4th of July 1778, and later secured the submission of Vincennes, which, however, was recaptured by General Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit. In the spring of 1779 Clark raised another force, and recaptured Vincennes from Hamilton. See Battle of Vincennes
On August 24, 1781 a American Unit under Colonel Lochry in the Ohio River ambushed by Native Americans under Joseph Brant//www.commonpatriot.com/lochrycreek.html.
However, a decisive victory in the West eluded the United States even as their fortunes had risen in the East. Raids and skirmishes continued along the frontier, including one at Gnadenhutten in 1782, at which US forces attacked a village of pacifist Moravian Delawares in retaliation for attacks by another group of First Nations. Later that year, the last major battle of the war, Blue Licks, saw a party of Kentuckians soundly defeated by a superior force of British regulars, Iroquois, Mingos, Shawnees and other First Nations.
List of Native American leaders during the American Revolution
- Joseph Brant (Mohawk)
- Molly Brant (Mohawk)
- Blue Jacket (Shawnee)
- Cornstalk (Shawnee)
- Cornplanter (Seneca)
- Guyasuta (Seneca)
- Red Jacket (Seneca)
- Dragging Canoe (Cherokee/Chickamauga)
- Dunquat (Wyandot "Half-King")
- White Eyes (Lenape)
- Captain Pipe (Lenape)
- Buckongahelas (Lenape)
- Gelelemend (Lenape)
Further reading
- Calloway, Colin G. The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
- Downes, Randolph C. Council Fires on the Upper Ohio: A Narrative of Indian Affairs in the Upper Ohio Valley until 1795. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1940; third paperback printing, 1989.
- Fitzpatrick, Alan. Wilderness War on the Ohio. 2005.
- Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse University Press, 1972.
- Nester, William. The Frontier War for American Independence. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2004.
- Sosin, Jack M. The Revolutionary Frontier, 1763-1783. New York: Holt, 1967.
- Williams, Glenn F. Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois. Yardley: Westholme Publishing, 2005.
"Western theater of the American Revolutionary War"