OCR Text |
Show 60 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Fort Mclntosh, Fort Finney, and Fort Harmar were never carried into effect. Moreover, the Indians came to distrust the Americans because assurances of protection against squatters, unfair traders, and hostile local officials proved worthless. The American position was that the United States had defeated Great Britain and her Indian allies, and that the Indians must now accept American control and must surrender such lands as were wanted; the Ohio country was to be opened to settlement; very modest compensation would be offered the Indians for their occupancy rights, but they must give way. To this the tribes could not agree. They turned to a revival of tribal confederacy so that they could more effectively resist the pressures being exerted on them. They were encouraged in their resistance by the British and by Joseph Brant, the very able leader of the Mohawks. Representatives of all the tribes of the Ohio and Great Lakes country-including the Iroquois, Shawnee, Miami, and Cherokee -drafted an address asking, among other things: that the surveyors then at work in the Seven Ranges be withdrawn; that the treaties of Fort Stanwyx with the Iroquois, and of Fort Mclntosh and Fort Finney with Ohio tribes, be reconsidered; that the land cessions be cancelled; and the Qhio River be made the southern boundary of tribal lands. Division among the tribes and the government's policy of playing one off against another weakened the Indian confederacy and for the moment its potential for resistance seemed to evaporate.2 Indian restlessness was in no way diminished by the treatment the Indians received from white settlers and government agents. Numerous incidents of murder and pillage finally brought emotions to a high state of tension, then to war. In 1790 General Harmar was dispatched with an army of 1,453 soldiers 21 have drawn heavily upon R. G. Downes, Council Fires on the Upper Ohio (Pittsburgh, 1940), pp. 277 ff., in addition to Mohr's and Prucha's accounts. into the Wabash Valley to discipline the Miami. He was soundly whipped. The following year General Arthur St. Clair, territorial Governor of Ohio, made a second military expedition against the recalcitrant and now jubilant Indians, only to suffer one of the most disastrous defeats the American Army has ever undergone. Behind the restless Indians who were unwilling to accept American control were the British, who had retained Forts Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinaw. In exchange for furs, they continued to supply the Indians with gifts, rations, medals, weapons, clothing, and goods of better quality than the Americans offered. The British did not want to lose control of the fur trade and also feared that hasty withdrawal from the forts might lead to a disastrous Indian uprising from which all whites would suffer. The continued domination of the fur trade by the British, their retention of the posts, and the Indian outrages for which they were regarded as responsible, all exacerbated the frontiersmen's feelings and might have produced war between the two Anglo-Saxon nations. St. Clair's disaster and the overwhelming Indian victory forced the withdrawal of many settlers from the Ohio country and contracted the zone of settlement. The American government now realized that only overpowering might and a thorough defeat of the Indians would make safe the further advance of settlement in Ohio. But before retribution was to be exacted the Americans tried once more to make peace, offering in 1793 to give up part of the land supposedly ceded at Fort Harmar and to make a gift of $50,000 and an annuity of SI 0,000. However, only complete withdrawal from the Ohio country would satisfy the natives, and negotiations broke down. General Anthony Wayne now took charge of the American Army, marched it to the Maumee, and there at Fallen Timbers defeated the combined forces of the Indians. The tribes became disillusioned when the British, who had given them hope of aid, |