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Treaty of Paris gave the U.S. vast areas in Transapphalachia it
did not yet occupy -> many Indians infuriated, refused to
recognize U.S. claim
U.S. Indian policy: a) civilize friendly Indians, b) protect their
lands, c) make treaties, survey and sell those same lands to
whites
• Indians were pressured to sign treaties ceding vast sections of their
homelands
continuation of bloody warfare in the 1780s and early 1790s
Reasons:
• extensive demographic pressure as white settlers rushed in and
took the lands
• ideology: Indians conquered people and thus possessed no right
to the land
• international threat: British slow to withdraw, kept their forts, and
supplied the Indians
In war woodland Indians enjoyed some tactical
advantages
• superb physical training
• penchant for concealment and surprise
• willingness to withdraw from unfavorable battlefield
situations
• depredations against isolated settlers
• Indians formed a loose confederacy
U.S. military
• division and rivalry between militia and regular army
• problems: supplies, horses, and logistics
• men often unprepared and poorly trained; cavalry largely
absent from the Indian wars in eastern woodlands.
• suffered repeated defeats. Battle of the Wabash, Nov. 4,
1791 -> the biggest defeat in the history of the U.S. Army
against Indians
• still, U.S. attacks on villages, farmlands, and trade routes
caused serious damages
Contest for the Great Lakes
region resumed a
generation later
Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809):
Indians ceded huge tracts
of land in return for
miserable annuities
Shawnee brothers
Tecumseh and
Tenskwatawa (the Prophet)
denounced the agreements
and sought a pan-Indian
coalition
• a religious revival with a central
message to abandon the ways of
the whites
• stop land cessions: land owned
in common by all Indians
U.S. troops also reorganized
• General “Mad” Anthony Wayne took charge
instilled iron discipline
stockpiled resources
expanded the line of forts toward the Miami villages
recruited Indian allies (Chickasaws and Choctaws)
1794, Battle of Fallen Timbers crushed
Indian resistance -> Indians ceded Ohio
• British abandoned the Indians -> did not want to
fight Wayne
• many leaders dead or discredited, short on
supplies -> organized resistance dissolved
Amidst rising tension in 1811
Governor William H. Harrison
decided to deliver the first
blow
He organized a thousand men
to strike the Prophet’s
principal village
Battle of Tippecanoe Creek,
Nov 7, 1811
• peace talks, surprise Indian attack
at dawn, American troops rallied,
bayonet charge and cavalry attack
brought victory
• “The Indians manifested a ferocity,
uncommon even with them…To
their savage fury, our troops
opposed that cool and deliberate
valor which is characteristic of the
Christian soldier.” – W. H. Harrison
hundreds of dead, torching of
the village, and destruction of
surrounding farmlands
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War of 1812 (Britain vs. U.S.) enabled
Tecumseh to continue fighting
• British supplied Tecumseh
Tecumseh sought to regain his
homelands
after initial success, war turned
disastrous
battlefield defeats, internal divisions, and
economic stress badly hurt the Indians
Tecumseh sought a decisive victory, but
was killed at Battle of the Thames, 1813
pan-Indian alliance dead, new
negotiations and land cessions
Creek homeland, a well-watered mixture of
forest and grassland, coveted by whites
Tecumseh found willing followers among
the Creek -> new group of spiritual leaders
emerged, “red sticks”, who called for a
renewal of Creek spiritualism and
independence, and resistance against
Americans
In 1813 Creek civil war broke out
• dispute over “plan for civilization”
• Creek Red Sticks also went to war against American
settlers
• British supplied the Red Sticks
Cherokees split after the First Creek War, some left
west voluntarily, the progressives stayed in Georgia
Rumors of gold in Cherokee lands -> gold rush in
1829
Georgia sent militiamen to Cherokee lands and Pres.
Andrew Jackson introduced Indian Removal Act
(1830), advocating relocation west of the Mississippi
of all eastern Indians
• Between 1831 and 1838, some 70,000 Indians moved west
Cherokees went to federal court
• Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) -> “domestic dependent
nations
• ” Worcester v. Georgia (1832) ->“laws of Georgia have no
force” on Cherokee lands
• Americans named Cherokees, Chickasaws,
Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles as ”Five civilized
tribes”
• Sought to transform their tribes into modern nations
For example, in 1827 the Cherokees declared themselves
an independent nation
• Controversy: Indians adopting white ways but
retaining independent cultures and polities
• Internally divided: “traditionalists” vs.
“progressives”
• Central question: how to react and adapt to US
invasion
Mims Massacre -> Red Stick warriors overran
Fort Mims trading house
Retaliation: General Andrew Jackson’s army
burned its way through Creek lands and
confronted them in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend
• Crushing victory for the U.S., only about 200 of the
original 1,000 warriors escaped
The powerful Creek people lost more than twothirds of their lands in Georgia/Alabama -> their
power broken
When Jackson became president in 1828, Creek
days in their shrunken domain were numbered
Second Creek War – last ditch effort to avoid
dispossession and emigration – ended in defeat
in 1836
Cherokee minority signed a treaty for
removal, majority refused to move
in 1838 seven thousand soldiers began
systematically rounding up Cherokees into
concentration camps where disease and
hunger killed many
Trail of Tears: terrible forced thousand mile
march westward in the winter of 1838
over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees
died
Genocide?
• Victory in court for the Cherokees ignored by Jackson and
Georgia
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14.11.2011
The Trail of Tears, painted by Robert Lindneux in 1942. It
commemorates the suffering of the Cherokee people under
forced removal. If any depictions of the "Trail of Tears" were
created at the time of the march, they have not survived.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1567.html
Seminole military culture:
people born through ethnogenesis, mainly
runaway Creeks and black slaves in the
1700s and early 1800s
people formed their society into clans, who
tended to live in their own talwas (towns)
warriors ranked into four classes
Imala, the lowest of rank; labotskalgi, higher; imala lakalgi,
still higher; and tustunugee, highest
leader’s position based upon reputation in
combat
war parties traveled light, perfected
ambush and siege techniques, used terrain
to their advantage, conducted night attacks
three wars, in which the Americans sought
to remove the Seminoles from Florida and
retrieve fugitive slaves
While most Sem. were removed, over 200
remained and never surrendered
problem was not so much Seminole lands
(mostly swamps), but the runaway black
slaves from the southern states who found
refuge among the Seminoles -> runaways
set a bad example -> fear of slave uprising
or mass escape always present in white
minds
First Seminole War (1814-19):
• Florida part of Spain, U.S. wanted it
• Fugitive slaves maddened southerners
• Andrew Jackson led an invasion force, destroyed
Negro Fort and Seminole villages
• Spain troubled by inner turmoil -> Adams-Onis
Treaty (1819) gave
U.S. Florida
• Pres. Andrew Jackson
Second Seminole War (1835-42)
• Seminole minority signed a removal treaty in 1832,
majority did not recognize it
• when U.S. Army tried to enforce removal, a war
broke out
• Dade Massacre – white battlefield catastrophe, Dec.
28, 1835. First major battle of the war. 108 army
soldiers under the command of Major Francis L.
Dade were attacked en route from Ft Brooke on
Tampa Bay to the interior Fort King -> only two white
men survived
• Prolonged conflict: army detachments moved in
canoes up the rivers; army used bloodhounds; often
unable to engage enemy combatants; a distasteful
war; sickness and suffering, problems adjusting to
the environment, many officers resigned
"Massacre of Major Dade and his Command," engraving
depicting discovery of the Dade battleground, published in 1847
in Barber's Incidents in American History
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14.11.2011
• only Indian war in which US Navy and Marine Corps
involved
• blacks, both free and slave, fought in significant numbers
alongside the Seminole
• in 1837 U.S. arrested war chief Osceola when he appeared
in a negotiation with a white flag -> Osceola died from
malaria in prison
• in 1841 US launched new offensive, an unprecedented
summer campaign, under command of Gen. William
Worth to the heart of the Everglades
• soldiers found few warriors but burned and destroyed a
number of villages -> Sem. faced starvation -> the
psychological impact of the army penetrating Everglades
was great -> Everglades no longer a Sem. Sanctuary ->
Sem. bands came forth to surrender
NARA caption: Marines battle Seminole Indians in the Florida
War--1835-1842. Defense Dept. Photo (Marine Corps) 306073-A,
USMC, NARA
• End result: removal of approximately 4,400 Sem.
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Thousands of Sem. and 1,500 Am. soldiers were
killed, and the campaign cost the U.S. $30 million
U.S. Army, although gaining few major battlefield
victories, showed sustainability, determination,
and relentlessness in wearing down the enemy
army used collective punishment, indiscriminate
violence and the targeting of civilians
similarities to Vietnam (location, tactics)?
short institutional memory -> most lessons of
warfare in a “foreign environment” forgotten
quickly -> see Apache wars
another removal era war
a band of the Sauk and Fox people went to war in 1832 to
defend their lands in Illinois
1804 treaty -> conceded lands east of the Mississippi for a
small price -> settlers poured in
Black Hawk slipped across Mississippi River -> army went
after -> surrender -> clash during negotiations (militia killed
two of BH’s men, a fight erupted) -> BH launched attacks
through spring of 1832 and evaded troops. By the end of
June BH low on supplies, troops after him, raiding riskier ->
tried to get across Miss. -> as they built rafts the army
arrived and opened fire on Indians trying to surrender ->
Battle of Bad Ax, 150 Indian dead, many prisoners, army
losses low
Black Hawk later captured and imprisoned
war lasted only fifteen weeks
survivors no choice but to move
Third Seminole War (1855-58)
• guerrilla war, small detachments of soldiers,
Seminole attacks against isolated settlers
• using Everglades, Sem. avoided the invading
soldiers
• U.S. used shallow boats and destroyed main
enemy village -> Sem. surrendered
Natives frequently divided over “civilization” policies
White desire for land unending; white policymakers
see Indian interests as secondary
Minority pressured to make treaties, others feel treaties
unjust
Treaties gave removal and violence legitimacy in white
eyes
Aggressive treaty enforcement
Charismatic indigenous leaders, spiritual crisis
“Total war” targeting enemy camps and supplies,
continued pressure, also several “decisive battles”
Why the U.S. Army prevailed in the end?
• indigenous allies, supply and manpower advantage,
resilience
End result: destruction, demoralization and removal
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