Written by Oscar Handlin
Written by Oscar Handlin

United States

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Written by Oscar Handlin
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The Native American response

The other major players in this struggle for control of North America were, of course, the American Indians. Modern historians no longer see the encounters between Native Americans and Europeans through the old lens in which “discoverers of a New World” find a “wilderness” inhabited by “savages.” Instead they see a story of different cultures interacting, with the better-armed Europeans eventually subduing the local population, but not before each side had borrowed practices and techniques from the other and certainly not according to any uniform plan.

The English significantly differed from the Spanish and French colonizers in North America. Spain’s widespread empire in the Southwest relied on scattered garrisons and missions to keep the Indians under control and “usefully” occupied. The French in Canada dealt with “their” Indians essentially as the gatherers of fur, who could therefore be left in de facto possession of vast forest tracts. English colonies, in what would eventually become their strength, came around to encouraging the immigration of an agricultural population that would require the exclusive use of large land areas to cultivate—which would have to be secured from native possessors.

English colonial officials began by making land purchases, but such transactions worked to the disadvantage of the Indians, to whom the very concept of group or individual “ownership” of natural resources was alien. After a “sale” was concluded with representatives of Indian peoples (who themselves were not always the “proprietors” of what they signed away), the Indians were surprised to learn that they had relinquished their hunting and fishing rights, and settlers assumed an unqualified sovereignty that Native American culture did not recognize.

In time, conflict was inevitable. In the early days of settlement, Indian-European cooperation could and did take place, as with, for example, the assistance rendered by Squanto to the settlers of Plymouth colony or the semidiplomatic marriage of Virginia’s John Rolfe to Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhatan. The Native Americans taught the newcomers techniques of survival in their new environment and in turn were introduced to and quickly adopted metal utensils, European fabrics, and especially firearms. They were less adept in countering two European advantages—the possession of a common written language and a modern system of exchange—so most purchases of Indian lands by colonial officials often turned into thinly disguised landgrabs. William Penn and Roger Williams made particular efforts to deal fairly with the Native Americans, but they were rare exceptions.

The impact of Indian involvement in the affairs of the colonists was especially evident in the Franco-British struggle over Canada. For furs the French had depended on the Huron people settled around the Great Lakes, but the Iroquois Confederacy, based in western New York and southern Ontario, succeeded in crushing the Hurons and drove Huron allies such as the Susquehannocks and the Delawares southward into Pennsylvania. This action put the British in debt to the Iroquois because it diverted some of the fur trade from French Montreal and Quebec city to British Albany and New York City. European-Indian alliances also affected the way in which Choctaws, influenced by the French in Louisiana, battled with Spanish-supported Apalachees from Florida and with the Cherokees, who were armed by the British in Georgia.

The French and Indian War not only strengthened the military experience and self-awareness of the colonists but also produced several Indian leaders, such as Red Jacket and Joseph Brant, who were competent in two or three languages and could negotiate deals between their own peoples and the European contestants. But the climactic Franco-British struggle was the beginning of disaster for the Indians. When the steady military success of the British culminated in the expulsion of France from Canada, the Indians no longer could play the diplomatic card of agreeing to support whichever king—the one in London or the one in Paris—would restrain westward settlement. Realizing this led some Indians to consider mounting a united resistance to further encroachments. This was the source of the rebellion led by the Ottawa chief Pontiac in 1763, but, like later efforts at cooperative Indian challenges to European and later U.S. power, it was simply not enough.

The American Revolution and the early federal republic

Prelude to revolution

Britain’s victory over France in the Great War for the Empire had been won at very great cost. British government expenditures, which had amounted to nearly £6.5 million annually before the war, rose to about £14.5 million annually during the war. As a result, the burden of taxation in England was probably the highest in the country’s history, much of it borne by the politically influential landed classes. Furthermore, with the acquisition of the vast domain of Canada and the prospect of holding British territories both against the various nations of Indians and against the Spaniards to the south and west, the costs of colonial defense could be expected to continue indefinitely. Parliament, moreover, had voted to give Massachusetts a generous sum in compensation for its war expenses. It therefore seemed reasonable to British opinion that some of the future burden of payment should be shifted to the colonists themselves—who until then had been lightly taxed and indeed lightly governed.

The prolonged wars had also revealed the need to tighten the administration of the loosely run and widely scattered elements of the British Empire. If the course of the war had confirmed the necessity, the end of the war presented the opportunity. The acquisition of Canada required officials in London to take responsibility for the unsettled western territories, now freed from the threat of French occupation. The British soon moved to take charge of the whole field of Indian relations. By the royal Proclamation of 1763, a line was drawn down the Appalachians marking the limit of settlement from the British colonies, beyond which Indian trade was to be conducted strictly through British-appointed commissioners. The proclamation sprang in part from a respect for Indian rights (though it did not come in time to prevent the uprising led by Pontiac). From London’s viewpoint, leaving a lightly garrisoned West to the fur-gathering Indians also made economic and imperial sense. The proclamation, however, caused consternation among British colonists for two reasons. It meant that limits were being set to the prospects of settlement and speculation in western lands, and it took control of the west out of colonial hands. The most ambitious men in the colonies thus saw the proclamation as a loss of power to control their own fortunes. Indeed, the British government’s huge underestimation of how deeply the halt in westward expansion would be resented by the colonists was one of the factors in sparking the 12-year crisis that led to the American Revolution. Indian efforts to preserve a terrain for themselves in the continental interior might still have had a chance with British policy makers, but they would be totally ineffective when the time came to deal with a triumphant United States of America.

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