Slavery, Free Blacks, and Native Americans

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Slavery, Free Blacks, and Native Americans

During the early American period of 1783 to 1815, only white adult men enjoyed the full range of privileges of citizenship that almost all U.S. citizens take for granted in the twenty-first century. Women generally could not vote and lost ownership to their property when they married. However, those with the fewest privileges were black Americans and Native Americans. Black slaves were considered property, not human beings. Native Americans were considered savages, something less than fully human. Neither slaves nor Native Americans would be extended U.S. citizenship until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Racial prejudice was extensive in early U.S. society. Even free blacks (non-slaves) were greatly limited in their rights and freedoms. Native Americans lost their traditional lands and lifestyles to the onslaught of U.S. expansion. U.S.–Native American relations during this period involved violent conflicts as alliances of Native American tribes fought to stop expansion of U.S. settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Ending slavery in the North

Slaves made up a large percentage of the population in early America. Of the four million inhabitants counted in the nation's first census in 1790, some seven hundred thousand (almost 18 percent) were black slaves. At that time, most slaves lived in the Southern states, particularly Maryland and Virginia.

Black slaves began arriving from Africa in the 1600s. They primarily worked the tobacco and rice fields of the Southern Colonies—Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Prior to the American Revolution (1775–83), slavery was generally accepted. The Quakers of Pennsylvania spoke out against slavery, but the issue did not attract much political discussion until after the United States won its independence.

The Northern states and territories began ending slavery in their areas. In 1777, as it prepared for statehood, Vermont was the first territory to ban slavery altogether in its new state constitution. Other Northern states followed. In addition, most Northern states banned slave trade within their boundaries by the end of the war in 1783.

Words to Know

abolition: The prohibition of slavery.

cotton gin: A machine that separates seeds from cotton fibers.

free black: A person of African birth or ancestry who was not the property of a slave owner.

manumission: The process of freeing a person from slavery.

plantation: A farm worked by one hundred or more slaves.

Ending slavery was a complicated matter. Even those who opposed slavery feared that a sudden end to the slavery system would have serious economic and social effects. Though many Northerners favored ending slavery, they did not necessarily wish to live with blacks as equals. Fear of a large black American population, suddenly set free, led some states to look for a way to "export" freed slaves to Africa. However, the idea of expelling hundreds of thousands of freed slaves was determined to be too impractical (though it was tried later in the 1820s). Therefore, most Northern states chose to end slavery gradually by freeing only the children of slaves. New York, which had more slaves than other Northern states, passed such a bill in 1799, leading to complete abolition (prohibition of slavery) in the state by the 1820s. By 1804, slavery was being phased out in all states north of Delaware.

The desire to see slavery fade away led the Second Continental Congress to pass the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which banned slavery from the newly acquired western lands known as the Northwest Territory. This territory included the future states of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota.

The Constitutional Convention

Slavery was such a controversial issue in the 1780s that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution avoided the subject as much as possible during the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787. They did not want to create a greater split between the Northern and Southern states than already existed. Those opposed to slavery simply hoped that it would eventually die out. National hero George Washington (1732–1799), a slave owner like many of the nation's Founding Fathers, expressed hope in 1786 that slavery would slowly fade away. Fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), who wrote in the 1776 Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," was also a slave owner. Despite publicly expressing grand ideas of equality, Jefferson personally wrestled with the idea of whether blacks were indeed naturally equal to whites.

One section of the Constitution had to identify how state population counts would be used to assign the appropriate number of seats in the House of Representatives. Northern delegates did not think slaves should be counted at all since they were not citizens and could not vote. Southern delegates wanted them counted since that would increase congressional representation for the South. In South Carolina, slaves made up about 44 percent of the population and 41 percent in Virginia. A "three-fifths compromise" was reached; the North and South agreed that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person. (The Constitution does not include the terms "slave" or "slavery." It refers to slaves only as "such Persons" and "other Persons.")

When the Founding Fathers signed the U.S. Constitution in 1787 and adopted the Bill of Rights in 1791, the United States was still participating in the worldwide slave trade. The Bill of Rights guaranteed certain basic human rights, but clearly, slaves were not protected by this legislation. The laws of the United States favored free, white adult males, usually property owners. Slaves were treated as if they were different, less than human.

Banning the slave trade

Some delegates to the Constitutional Convention wanted to prohibit U.S. participation in the international slave trade immediately. However, Southern delegates blocked all efforts for a constitutional ban on importing slaves. As a compromise, the Constitution provided that the federal government could not prohibit the importation of slaves into the United States for at least twenty years after the Constitution's ratification (approval) by the states. However, following adoption of the Constitution, Congress was free to prohibit U.S. citizens from exporting slaves to foreign markets.

In March 1807, near the end of the twenty-year ban on congressional action to stop slave trading, President Thomas Jefferson initiated the process for prohibiting international slave trade. The resulting legislation passed through Congress easily, partly because the surplus of slaves in the upper South could meet the needs of the lower South. The prohibition took effect on January 1, 1808.

Though slaves could no longer be legally imported, the number of slaves continued to increase rapidly, largely through natural population growth. Nevertheless, with the end of U.S. involvement in international slave trade and the end of slavery in Northern states, the conflict over slavery decreased among the general American public during the next decade.

Fugitive slaves

Not surprisingly, Congress had to address issues related to slavery early on. Conflicts arose between slave states (states where slavery was accepted) and non-slave states (states where slavery was prohibited). The U.S. Constitution (Article 4, Section 2) addressed the issue of fugitive slaves, slaves who had run away to a non-slave state. The Constitution provided for their return to the states they had fled. It assumed states would cooperate on the matter. However, moral attitudes toward slavery varied greatly between states.

A key legal case developed when three white Virginians entered Pennsylvania in search of a runaway slave. They seized John Davis, claiming he was the runaway, and took him to Virginia. Pennsylvania governor Thomas Mifflin (1744–1800) requested the three Virginians be extradited (transferred by legal authorities) to Pennsylvania to face kidnapping charges. Virginia governor Beverley Randolph (1754–1797) refused to comply with the request. He claimed Davis was a fugitive slave subject to return under the Constitution. Mifflin contended that Davis was now a free black.

With Pennsylvania and Virginia at a standoff, Congress sought to resolve the dispute and avoid similar confrontations between other states. U.S. society already considered slaves as property; it was understood that slaves did not have constitutional rights like other Americans, such as the rights to vote or own property. Now Congress declared through the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 that escaped slaves also had no constitutional rights. Slaves who believed they had escaped to freedom had no rights to jury trial and no opportunity to prove that they were now free. The act represented the first occasion that Congress struggled to resolve conflicts between rights of personal liberty and personal property.

Slavery grows in the South and on the frontier

The hope that slavery might disappear on its own ended abruptly in 1793 when inventor Eli Whitney (1765–1825) perfected the cotton gin. The device could remove seeds from cotton fifty times faster than a human hand. With British demands for cotton on the rise, the South suddenly saw cotton as a major cash crop.

Even with the cotton gin, cotton farming required substantial labor, making it well suited to the use of slaves. Because cotton plants ripened at different times, fields had to be picked three times in a single harvest season. Therefore, cotton planters needed large labor groups on a steady basis. Slavery provided exactly that, and it became a much more fundamental part of the South's economy.

In the mid-1790s, it was discovered that sugarcane grew well in southern Louisiana. This discovery further increased the demand for slaves as sugarcane plantations soon spread up the Mississippi River for a hundred miles. As tobacco farmers in Maryland and Virginia converted to wheat and cotton, and sugarcane rose in importance in the South, a major shift in slave ownership occurred. Chesapeake farmers in Maryland and Virginia sold their slaves to cotton and sugarcane planters in the lower South. Interstate slave trade was thriving during this early American period.

The number of slaves in the United States rose sharply after the invention of the cotton gin and the expansion of sugarcane farms. From 700,000 slaves in 1790, the number grew to 900,000 in 1800, almost 1.2 million in 1810, and more than 1.5 million in 1820. Virginia and Maryland were the largest slave-holding states in early America. Even as late as 1810, 40 percent of the slaves in the United States were still in those two states. However, the shift of slavery further to the South was escalating. By 1820, half of South Carolina's overall population was made up of black slaves.

African slaves were the largest group of immigrants entering the United States between 1783 and 1808. Over two hundred thousand slaves were imported during this time. As late as 1810, 20 percent of the slaves in South Carolina were born in Africa, and most were from Angola. One consequence was that African customs remained longer in South Carolina than in other regions.

The American frontier west of the Appalachians and south of the Northwest Territory became a slavery frontier. Between 1790 and 1810, seventy-five thousand slaves were taken from Virginia and Maryland into Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1803, the United States purchased a region called Louisiana from France; the region included the entire lower Mississippi River valley west of the Mississippi River in addition to a narrow strip east of the Mississippi along the Gulf Coast. Slavery already existed in the region, which had been under Spanish control. The southern portion of the Louisiana Purchase was therefore an established stronghold for slavery. As new western territories sought statehood through the 1820s, slavery became a major social issue in America, eventually leading to the American Civil War (1861–65).

Slave life

Slaves generally worked on the cotton, rice, tobacco, and sugarcane farms in the South. Cotton plantation work for slaves involved backbreaking field labor as well as more specialized jobs in workshops and on loading docks. Slave women primarily worked as domestic servants on plantations and in homes in the port cities.

Living and working conditions among slaves also varied greatly around the country and between large and small farms. There were urban slaves and rural slaves, house slaves and field hands. The average slave owner had only a few slaves, often just one or two. A relatively small number of slave owners lived on large plantations with one hundred or more slaves.

During the early years following the American Revolution, slaves were often able to maintain a family life. However, the great expansion of cotton and sugarcane plantations in the late 1790s led to a vastly greater demand for slaves in the lower South. Farmers in the Chesapeake Bay area sold their excess slaves (thereby splitting up families) as they changed from tobacco to wheat crops. In addition, growth of the interstate slave trade and expansion of slavery into the frontier made it much more difficult for slaves to preserve their family ties. In areas where slaves were most numerous, such as the coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia, they had a better chance of maintaining a family life.

Free blacks

The 1790 national census indicated that fewer than 60,000 free blacks lived in the United States at the time. A free black was a person of African birth or ancestry who was not the property of a slave owner. Like the U.S. population in general, the number of free blacks steadily grew. By 1810, 186,000, or roughly 13 percent of blacks in America, were free. A third of the free blacks lived in Virginia and Maryland. Some 20 percent of the blacks in Maryland were free, while just 7 percent were free in Virginia. About 22,000 free blacks lived in Boston. By 1820, the total free black population was more than 230,000.

States had different rules on how an owner could free a slave. However, no matter how they were freed, former slaves did not enjoy the same privileges as the white population. For example, they could be sold back into slavery if they did not pay their taxes. Also, freed slaves could not vote. Some of the first state constitutions, such as those of Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina, allowed free blacks to vote. However, soon their laws changed to exclude blacks from voting. Delaware changed in 1792 and Maryland in 1810. In 1802, the newly established nation's capital, Washington, D.C., also prohibited free blacks from voting.

Children of free blacks were not allowed to attend white schools in cities; blacks had to arrange for their own education. So growing black communities in urban areas established their own schools. In 1794, the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery established its own school. In New York, the Manumission Society sponsored schools for blacks. ("Manumission" is the process of freeing a person from slavery.)

Free black men found work on docks and with the merchant marine (private commercial ships that assist the navy in times of need). Black women frequently worked as domestic servants. Through the 1790s, a good percentage of free blacks lived in white households, working as servants or laborers. However, by 1815, more were living in black households in emerging black communities.

Support and self-help organizations, such as the Brown Fellowship Society in Charleston, founded in 1790, also grew in number. Philadelphia was home to the Female Benevolent Society of St. Thomas and the African Friendly Society for males. In fact, Philadelphia had eleven such societies by 1811. A black American Masonic lodge was formed in Boston in the 1780s and received a charter (license) from England since the white lodges in America would not grant one. These black Masons became an important part of the free black community in Philadelphia. In addition, a group of black seamen formed a lodge in Philadelphia in 1798, obtaining a charter from Germany.

Slave revolts in the French colony of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean Sea in the early 1790s scared Americans and cooled their desire to free more slaves. Americans feared that an increase in the free black population might encourage a slave revolt in the United States. In 1800, a young slave named Gabriel Prosser (c. 1776–1800) plotted a slave revolt in Virginia. However, news of the planned revolt involving one thousand slaves leaked out, and thirty-five slaves, including Prosser, were caught and hanged. Harsh measures were used on plantations to discourage any other plans for rebellion.

States such as Virginia passed measures prohibiting free blacks from traveling to another county without permission and making it more difficult for owners to free their slaves. When the black republic of Haiti was formed on Santo Domingo in 1804, the United States did not recognize it as it had recognized other new republics. A black republic is a nation populated largely by people of African descent that is governed by the consent of the people and for the benefit of the people through elected representatives. The United States feared that the example of Haiti might encourage blacks in America to seek greater liberties. Though Louisiana had a large and active free black population, in 1806 the state increased restrictions on the entry of free blacks and began removing freedoms they enjoyed. By 1815, economic concerns and fears regarding free blacks had halted the abolition movement.

Growth of black churches

Religious denominations other than Quakers began pressing for antislavery measures in the 1780s and 1790s. The evangelical Baptists and Methodists (see Chapter 12) joined the Quakers in questioning slavery. Virginia Baptists passed antislavery resolutions in 1789, followed by the Baltimore Methodists and the Kentucky Presbyterians in 1809.

Black membership in religious denominations grew during this period. The evangelical movement (see Chapter 12) in the United States attracted both free blacks and slaves. Evangelicals preached about developing a personal relationship with God, and they based their faith on the Bible. At first, blacks were included in largely white congregations, and black preachers preached to interracial congregations. By 1800, purely black congregations were forming and had their own black preachers.

The first independent black churches formed in Philadelphia. In 1794, blacks broke away from the Methodist Church and formed the St. Thomas African Episcopal Church and the Bethel Methodist Church. Two former slaves, Richard Allen (1760–1816) and Absalom Jones (1746–1818), led Philadelphia's black church community. From their pulpits, they were a voice for blacks' rights and freedom. The black churches immediately attracted large memberships. Bethel had some thirteen hundred members by 1810. In Baltimore in 1800, nearly half of the Methodists were blacks, both free and slave. By 1815, some four thousand slaves and free blacks were members of African Methodist churches in Charleston, South Carolina. Blacks also formed separate Baptist and Presbyterian churches by 1810.

Native Americans in early America

When European colonists first settled along the east coast, hundreds of Native American settlements dotted the landscape. The new colonial settlements were outnumbered and held a precarious existence. They eagerly signed treaties of peace and friendship to ensure their safety from any possible hostile attacks. However, the colonists steadily grew in numbers, and by the mid-1700s, they were relatively equal to the Native Americans in strength. By the time of the American Revolution, few Native American groups survived along the Atlantic coast. The native population had been killed by war, isolated skirmishes, disease, and starvation. However, Native American peoples still lived in large numbers west of the Appalachian Mountains.

During the Revolution, most Native Americans west of the Appalachian Mountains sided with the British. In Kentucky, for example, between 1780 and 1782, a force of one thousand Shawnee led by British Loyalists attacked U.S. settlements. In one battle, over two hundred settlers, including women and children, were killed. A U.S. military force, led by Major George Rogers Clark (1752–1818), sought retaliation by destroying Shawnee and Delaware villages. Fighting also spread into western Pennsylvania until the war ended in 1783.

The 1783 Treaty of Paris, the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, took the lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River from the British and gave them to the United States. However, the United States still had to negotiate with Native American tribes to gain actual possession of the lands for American settlement. The United States made this task more difficult by treating the Native Americans in the region as defeated enemies.

Establishing U.S.–Native American relations

The Articles of Confederation, the body of laws that governed the nation in the early 1780s, did not clearly define what powers the federal or state governments actually held in dealing with Native American issues. The central government had primary responsibility as long as its decisions did not restrict state activities in any way. The Second Continental Congress clarified matters in 1787 when it passed the Northwest Ordinance, which established the Northwest Territory from much of the land gained from the British at the end of the war. The ordinance stated that only the federal government could negotiate treaties with tribes; states and individuals did not have this right. In other words, the ordinance gave the central government much firmer control over Native American matters in the Northwest Territory.

The U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1788, gave Congress broad powers over Native American relations. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, gave the federal government exclusive authority "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Native American tribes." The states' role was clearly secondary to that of the United States concerning Native American matters.

When the new Congress first met in 1789, it began to exert its new powers over Native American relations. Congress passed the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790. The act laid a strong foundation for future U.S.–Native American relations. It expanded the national government's role in Native American affairs beyond the Northwest Territory to include all the United States. The federal government would now control all interaction with Native Americans. States and local governments could no longer sign treaties with tribes, nor could they or private citizens purchase land from Native Americans. The federal government also would regulate all trade with Native Americans. Any merchants who violated U.S.–Native American trade arrangements would face penalties. The act also established criminal punishments for murder and other crimes against Native Americans on Native American lands.

The 1790 act started a new era of treaties. Through its constitutional treaty-making powers, the federal government negotiated treaties with Native American tribes as if they were independent nations that possessed various parts of the frontier. The United States primarily used treaties to purchase land for U.S. settlements. However, the negotiations took place in an atmosphere of extreme duress for the tribes, and U.S. officials controlled the results by negotiating only with Native Americans of their choosing. Usually the tribal members they selected had no real authority from the tribe to sell the land. In addition, the United States often purchased the land for only a few cents an acre.

The treaty process enabled the United States to appear virtuous as it took over Native American lands. Treaty negotiations gave the appearance of fairness and a peaceful, voluntary transfer of land. Of course, frontier settlers were in a hurry and did not care to wait for treaty negotiations. Pioneers only wanted the Native Americans out of the way, whether peacefully or not.

Hostile relations

While Congress was busy establishing a long-term Native American policy, U.S.–Native American relations between 1783 and 1815 involved numerous skirmishes and battles full of brutal hand-to-hand combat. The fighting led to many deaths and much bitterness. Fighting Native American uprisings was a constant activity of the small U.S. military. Possession of more-advanced military technology and a larger supply of arms and ammunition led to a pronounced U.S. advantage despite the valiant efforts of Native American alliances in protecting their lands. Eventually the survivors of some thirty eastern tribes would relocate westward beyond the Mississippi. The Native American wars during this period produced new heroes in the form of Americans who fought Native Americans. Two such fighters, William Henry Harrison (1773–1841) and Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), went on to become president.

The Creek and Georgia

The Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes lived in portions of present-day North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. After the American Revolution, Georgia began expanding west and claiming Creek lands. A loose-knit Creek Confederacy formed in the 1780s under the leadership of Alexander McGillivray (c. 1759–1793), born to a Scottish trader and a Creek mother. McGillivray wanted to form a united resistance to U.S. expansion beyond the Appalachians. Through a treaty with Spain, which still held possession of Florida, he gained access to military supplies. Between 1785 and 1787, McGillivray and the Creek fought back U.S. settlers from Georgia and even ranged north to skirmish with settlers in Tennessee.

In 1790, President George Washington was eager to bring peace to the South's frontier. McGillivray signed the Treaty of New York with the U.S. government. The treaty recognized the Creek as an independent nation and established a border between Creek and Georgia settlements. Not long afterward, in February 1793, McGillivray died from an illness. Pressure from Georgia quickly resumed as cotton plantations began spreading, but the Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw still had their own settlements and agricultural fields south of the Carolinas. Many of them resented the American expansion.

Ohio Country

In the Ohio River valley west of the Appalachian Mountains in the late 1780s, the Native American population stiffened in resistance to the continued loss of their lands to American settlements. As new settlers cleared the woods and plowed agricultural fields, game and natural foods the Native Americans had relied upon for centuries began to vanish.

In 1785, the Second Continental Congress sent a group of negotiators, including George Rogers Clark, to the Ohio Country to peacefully gain lands for U.S. settlement. The Ohio Country consisted of the frontier lands west of the Appalachian Mountains and north of the Ohio River, including the present state of Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and eastern Indiana. The negotiations lasted several weeks at Fort McIntosh. Finally, tribal representatives from the Wyandot, Delaware, Ottawa, and Chippewa tribes relented to pressures from the American negotiators and ceded (gave up) lands in eastern and southern Ohio. They also promised not to form alliances in resistance to U.S. settlement. Other Native Americans claimed, however, that the Native American representatives at Fort McIntosh had no authority to give the land to the United States. The Shawnee lost their lands in southern Ohio, for example, although they were not represented at the negotiations. In addition, Americans soon began moving into the remaining Native American lands in northwestern Ohio, even though the United States had promised to keep them out. In reaction, Native American groups renewed hostilities against U.S. settlements. By the late 1780s, the Native Americans had slowed the settlers' advancement into the Northwest Territory.

The U.S. government under the Articles of Confederation had no money to fight the Native Americans. Secretary of War Henry Knox (1750–1806) directed the governor of the Northwest Territory, Arthur St. Clair (1736–1818), to reestablish peaceful relations. St. Clair met with Native American leaders of the Wyandot, Delaware, Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, and Sauk tribes at Fort Harmar in December 1788. Although a treaty was signed on January 9, 1789, the terms were largely forced on the Native Americans by St. Clair. After the treaty, there was an increase of Native American attacks, particularly by the Shawnee, who again claimed that they were not part of the treaty. Under the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1789, the federal government could now finance a military force to push Native Americans back from the Ohio area.

Native American resistance to settlement

In October 1790, Little Turtle (c. 1752–1812) led a combined force of Miami, Shawnee, and Delaware in a battle against an American force in northern Ohio. The American force, led by General Josiah Harmar (1753–1813), consisted of 320 poorly trained regular troops and over one thousand militia. The Native Americans killed 183 of the Americans. After their victory, the Native American peoples became more confident in defending their lands. Little Turtle formed an alliance among the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, and Potawatomi; it was known as the Miami Confederacy. Encouraged by British troops, who still occupied fur-trading posts on American soil, these Native Americans began raiding white settlements and killing Americans on a weekly basis. Fear spread among the settlements.

In 1791, Governor St. Clair led a force of 2,300 troops against the Miami Confederacy. The Native American force killed 647 American troops, gaining another major victory. It was the worst military defeat to be suffered by the United States in the history of U.S.–Native American relations.

St. Clair's defeat alarmed President Washington. The president turned to General "Mad Anthony" Wayne (1745–1796), a veteran of the American Revolution, and asked him to build a new, more highly trained force. Wayne's force gathered at Fort Washington at present-day Cincinnati, Ohio, and prepared to challenge the Miami Confederacy.

As the troops trained, the United States and the Native American alliance conducted negotiations through the summer of 1793. With no agreement reached, Wayne led his army of three thousand soldiers into battle. Building a series of forts along the way, they finally encountered a Native American force of fifteen hundred fighters, this time led by Blue Jacket (c. 1745–c. 1810) of the Shawnee. The Native American force established a defensive position near present-day Toledo, Ohio, where a number of trees had blown down from a major storm. The resulting battle is known as the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

The U.S. forces were victorious on August 20, though each side lost about forty men. The Native Americans retreated to a nearby British fort, but the British refused to help them despite earlier promises of assistance. The U.S. troops destroyed a Native American village and its crops before they withdrew from the area.

After the U.S. victory over the Miami Confederacy at Fallen Timbers, the region north of the Ohio River was much safer for American settlement. The following year, in 1795, the United States and the Confederacy, led by Little Turtle, signed the Treaty of Greenville, which ceded much of Ohio to the United States.

The "civilization" program

Following the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, the U.S. government adopted a program to "civilize" the Native Americans by turning them into American farmers. Treaties often promised agricultural implements and spinning wheels to enable Native Americans to adopt a farming lifestyle. However, most Native Americans did not find this new way of life acceptable; they showed a stronger determination to maintain their traditional economies and homelands than Americans had expected.

Tecumseh and the Prophet

The Battle of Fallen Timbers and the resulting Treaty of Greenville quieted the northwestern frontier for several years. Eventually, however, it became evident that the United States was not going to honor the boundaries between white settlements and Native American lands established in the treaty. Unrest began to grow again among the Native American tribes.

In reaction to the constant push of American settlement, a new Native American resistance effort grew. The leader of this resistance was Tecumseh (1768–1813), a Shawnee chief, and his brother Elskwatawa (c. 1768–1834), known as "the Prophet," an influential religious leader. Elskwatawa, also referred to as Tenskwatawa, argued for revitalization, a return to old beliefs, and traditional tribal lifestyles. He rejected American goods, including alcohol, and American cultural habits. His message came at a crucial time: Tribal economies had been struggling since the British withdrew from the fur trade in the Great Lakes region. Alcoholism among the Native Americans was on the rise. People were eager for a change.

Tecumseh and Elskwatawa established a new village in 1805 near present-day Greenville, Ohio. By 1808, the village had grown dramatically, but U.S. settlement was pressing in. The Native Americans moved the village further west to the mouth of the Tippecanoe River near present-day Lafayette, Indiana. It was known as Prophetstown.

A new alliance

Newly elected president Thomas Jefferson began pressing the governor of the Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison, to negotiate treaties to open the way for further settlement. Little Turtle, chief of the Miami, agreed to sign a series of treaties, concluding with the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809. The treaties opened more of the Northwest Territory to white settlement. They also greatly angered other Native American leaders, who believed Little Turtle was giving in too easily by signing the treaties. Thousands of settlers continued to arrive.

In reaction to the treaties signed by Little Turtle, Tecumseh began building a broad alliance of Native Americans from up and down the Mississippi River. Tecumseh urged the Native Americans to halt all land sales to the United States and advocated joint ownership of the remaining land among the tribes. The alliance consisted of over thirty tribes who occupied 500,000 square miles of territory. The fifteen thousand armed fighters in those tribes presented a serious challenge to further American settlement. Angered by the Treaty of Fort Wayne, Tecumseh personally met with Governor Harrison and warned him that settlers were endangering themselves by moving into the area supposedly acquired by the United States in the treaty.

In the summer of 1811, Tecumseh journeyed to the South again to recruit warriors from the Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes. However, the Creek were the only ones interested. A group from the Creek tribe, angered by continued U.S. expansion into their territory, organized and joined Tecumseh's alliance. The Creek group was known as Red Sticks. In November, while Tecumseh was away in the South recruiting for his alliance, Governor Harrison gathered a force and attacked Prophetstown, burning it to the ground.

War of 1812

After American troops attacked and destroyed his village, Tecumseh and his alliance joined with British forces in the War of 1812 (1812–15). They helped the British repel American forces attempting to invade Canada. During the war, some 150 hostile actions took place between Native American and U.S. forces. In the South, 2,000 Red Sticks fought a series of bloody conflicts with U.S. forces. In August 1813, they attacked Fort Mims, an American post near Mobile, Alabama, killing some 250 whites and Native Americans who allied with them.

After a number of victories by the combined Native American and British forces along the Canadian border, the U.S. Navy gained control of Lake Erie, cutting off the vital British supply line. Much to Tecumseh's dismay, the British began a retreat into Canada. Tecumseh, who was made a general in the British army, reluctantly joined the retreat. In October 1813, he was killed by a pursuing American force at the Battle of the Thames in Ontario, Canada. Tecumseh's body was mutilated by U.S. soldiers, then buried in a mass grave at the battle location.

Back in the South, the United States organized a large force under General Andrew Jackson to crush the Red Stick forces. The force included 1,500 Americans, 500 Cherokee, and 100 Creeks allied with the United States. The U.S. force defeated the Creek Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama on March 27, 1814. The Creek lost 800 warriors, and 350 of their women and children were captured. Some 2,000 Creek rebels fled to Spanish-controlled Florida, where they joined the Seminoles. The Creek who stayed retreated to southern and western Alabama. They signed the Treaty of Fort Jackson in August 1814, ceding 23 million acres to the United States.

A Peaceful Response—The Cherokee

As American settlements spread westward and southward in the 1780s, Native American responses to U.S. expansion took different paths. In the Southeast, many of the Cherokee chose a peaceful response to American expansion. The United States signed the Treaties of Hopewell in 1786 with the Cherokee and other Southeast tribes, including the Choctaw and Chickasaw. The treaties stated that any trespassers into Native American lands were subject to tribal punishment. In addition, U.S. citizens who had settled on tribal lands were required to move. In 1792, President George Washington issued a proclamation offering a $500 reward for the capture of any person who killed a Cherokee in their western Georgia towns.

Realizing the American presence was permanent, the Cherokee abandoned their hunting culture and began farming. Some even became plantation owners and owned dozens of black slaves. Others became businessmen, managing stores, mills, and other businesses. Several hundred Cherokee served with General Andrew Jackson's force at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, fighting against a rebellious Creek force. The Cherokee also joined U.S. forces in fighting the British in the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. To help themselves succeed in the white world, the Cherokee developed a native alphabet and by 1827 adopted a democratic constitution. These adaptations, however, only bought the Cherokee some time; U.S. forces would soon remove them from their remaining eastern homelands, just as they had removed less cooperative tribes. Many of the Cherokee ended up in a region set aside for them and other tribes in Ozark Plateau of southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma.

Chickasaw, Cherokee, and some Creek tribes fought as part of Jackson's forces at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815, helping to defeat the British in the War of 1812. After the war, Jackson paid the Chickasaw $300,000 in annual payments of $35,000 for their lands north of Mississippi, a generous offer at the time made in appreciation of their assistance. Like other eastern tribes, they eventually ended up on lands set aside for displaced Native Americans in present-day eastern Oklahoma. The death of Tecumseh and the defeat of the Red Sticks ended all Native American hopes of stopping American settlement as it spread toward the Mississippi River. The Prophet's following of believers withered.

After defeating the British in the War of 1812, the United States abandoned the program of "civilizing" the Native Americans and adopted a harsher policy of removal, sending the Native Americans to land newly designated as Native American country by the U.S. government. In 1824, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was created to administer the government's policies regarding Native Americans. In 1830, the Indian Removal Act led to mass relocations of Native Americans still living east of the Mississippi River; they were sent to lands set aside west of the Mississippi River. U.S. expansion would continue to push the Indians farther west later in the nineteenth century.

For More Information

Books

Carter, Harvey Lewis. The Life and Times of Little Turtle. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1992.

Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. 8th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Horton, James O., and Lois E. Horton, eds. A History of the African American People: The History, Traditions, & Culture of African Americans. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997.

Washburn, Wilcomb E., ed. Handbook of North American Indians: History of Indian-White Relations. Vol. 4. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1988.

Wilkinson, Charles F. American Indians, Time, and the Law: Native Societies in a Modern Constitutional Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.