American Indian Wars
The American Indian Wars is the collective name for the various armed conflicts fought by European governments and colonists, the United States and Canadian governments and American and Canadian settlers, against various American Indian and First Nation tribes. These conflicts occurred in North America from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the 1920s; the various Indian Wars resulted from a wide variety of factors, including cultural clashes, land disputes, criminal acts committed on both sides. European powers and the colonies enlisted Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against one another's colonial settlements. After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and involved disputes over land use; the British Royal Proclamation of 1763, included in the Constitution of Canada, prohibited white settlers from taking the lands of indigenous peoples in Canada without signing a treaty with them. It continues to be the law in Canada today, 11 Numbered Treaties, covering most of the First Nations lands, limited the number of such conflicts.
As white settlers spread westward across America after 1780, the size and intensity of armed conflicts increased between settlers and various cultures of Indians. The climax came in the War of 1812, which resulted in the defeat of major Indian coalitions in the Midwest and the South. Conflict with settlers became much less common and were resolved by treaty through sale or exchange of territory between the federal government and specific tribes; the Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the US government to enforce the Indian removal from east of the Mississippi River to the west, what the government considered the sparsely populated American frontier. The federal US policy of removal was refined in the West, as American settlers kept expanding their territories, to relocate Indian tribes to specially designated and federally protected reservations; the colonization of North America by the English, Spanish and Swedish was resisted by some Indian tribes and assisted by other tribes. Wars and other armed conflicts in the 17th and 18th centuries included: Beaver Wars between the Iroquois and the French, who allied with the Algonquians Anglo-Powhatan Wars, including the 1622 Jamestown Massacre, between English colonists and the Powhatan Confederacy in the Colony of Virginia Pequot War of 1636–38 between the Pequot tribe and colonists from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Connecticut Colony Kieft's War in the Dutch territory of New Netherland between colonists and the Lenape people Peach Tree War, the large-scale attack by the Susquehannocks and allied tribes on several New Netherland settlements along the Hudson River Esopus Wars, conflicts between the Esopus tribe of Lenape Indians and colonial New Netherlanders in Ulster County, New York King Philip's War in New England between colonists and the Narragansett people Tuscarora War in the Province of North Carolina Yamasee War in the Province of South Carolina Dummer's War in northern New England and French Acadia Pontiac's War in the Great Lakes region Lord Dunmore's War in western Virginia In several instances, warfare in America was a reflection of European rivalries, with American Indian tribes splitting their alliances among the powers siding with their trading partners.
Various tribes fought on each side in King William's War, Queen Anne's War, Dummer's War, King George's War, the French and Indian War, allying with British or French colonists according to their own self interests. Indian tribes differed in their alliances during the American Revolution and the War of 1812; the Cherokees supported the British in the Revolutionary War and raided frontier American settlements in the hope of driving out the settlers, four Iroquois tribes fought against the Patriots. Other tribes fought for the American Patriots, such as the Oneida people and Tuscarora people of the Iroquois Confederacy in New York. British merchants and government agents began supplying weapons to Indians living in the United States following the Revolution in the hope that, if a war broke out, they would fight on the British side; the British further planned to set up an Indian nation in the Ohio-Wisconsin area to block further American expansion. The US protested and went to war in 1812. Most Indian tribes supported the British those allied with Tecumseh, but they were defeated by General William Henry Harrison.
The War of 1812 spread to Indian rivalries, as well. Many refugees from defeated tribes went over the border to Canada. During the early 19th century, the federal government was under pressure by settlers in many regions to expel Indians from their areas; the Indian Removal Act of 1830 offered Indians the choices of assimilating and giving up tribal membership, relocation to an Indian reservation with an exchange or payment for lands, or moving west. Some resisted most notably the Seminoles in a series of wars in Florida, they were never defeated. The United States gave up on the remainder, by living defensively deep in the swamps and Everglades. Others were moved to reservations west of the Mississippi River, most famously the Cherokee whose relocation was call
Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis
Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis KG, PC, styled Viscount Brome between 1753 and 1762 and known as The Earl Cornwallis between 1762 and 1792, was a British Army general and official. In the United States and the United Kingdom he is best remembered as one of the leading British generals in the American War of Independence, his surrender in 1781 to a combined American and French force at the Siege of Yorktown ended significant hostilities in North America. He served as a civil and military governor in Ireland and India. Born into an aristocratic family and educated at Eton and Cambridge, Cornwallis joined the army in 1757, seeing action in the Seven Years' War. Upon his father's death in 1762 he entered the House of Lords. From 1766 until 1805 he was Colonel of the 33rd Regiment of Foot, he next saw military action in 1776 in the American War of Independence. Active in the advance forces of many campaigns, in 1780 he inflicted an embarrassing defeat on the American army at the Battle of Camden.
He commanded British forces in the March 1781 Pyrrhic victory at Guilford Court House. Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown in October 1781 after an extended campaign through the Southern states, marked by disagreements between him and his superior, General Sir Henry Clinton. Despite this defeat, Cornwallis retained the confidence of successive British governments and continued to enjoy an active career. Knighted in 1786, he was in that year appointed to be Governor-General and commander-in-chief in India. There he enacted numerous significant reforms within the East India Company and its territories, including the Cornwallis Code, part of which implemented important land taxation reforms known as the Permanent Settlement. From 1789 to 1792 he led British and Company forces in the Third Anglo-Mysore War to defeat the Mysorean ruler Tipu Sultan. Returning to Britain in 1794, Cornwallis was given the post of Master-General of the Ordnance. In 1798 he was appointed Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-chief of Ireland, where he oversaw the response to the 1798 Irish Rebellion, including a French invasion of Ireland, was instrumental in bringing about the Union of Great Britain and Ireland.
Following his Irish service, Cornwallis was the chief British signatory to the 1802 Treaty of Amiens and was reappointed to India in 1805. He died in India not long after his arrival. Cornwallis was born in Grosvenor Square in London, he was the eldest son of 5th Baron Cornwallis. His mother, was the daughter of Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, niece of Sir Robert Walpole, his uncle, was Archbishop of Canterbury. Frederick's twin brother, was a military officer, colonial governor, founder of Halifax, Nova Scotia, his brother William became an Admiral in the Royal Navy. His other brother, James inherited the earldom from Cornwallis's son, Charles; the family was established at Brome Hall, near Eye, Suffolk, in the 14th century, its members would represent the county in the House of Commons over the next three hundred years. Frederick Cornwallis, created a Baronet in 1627, fought for King Charles I, followed King Charles II into exile, he was made Baron Cornwallis, of Eye in the County of Suffolk, in 1661, by judicious marriages his descendants increased the importance of his family.
Cornwallis was educated at Clare College, Cambridge. While at Eton, he received an injury to his eye by an accidental blow while playing hockey, from Shute Barrington Bishop of Durham, he obtained his first commission as Ensign in the 1st Foot Guards, on 8 December 1757. He sought and gained permission to engage in military studies abroad. After travelling on the continent with a Prussian officer, Captain de Roguin, he studied at the military academy of Turin. Upon completion of his studies in Turin in 1758, he traveled to Geneva, where he learned that British troops were to be sent to the Continent in the Seven Years' War. Although he tried to reach his regiment before it sailed from the Isle of Wight, he learnt upon reaching Cologne that it had sailed, he managed instead to secure an appointment as a staff officer to Lord Granby. A year he participated at the Battle of Minden, a major battle that prevented a French invasion of Hanover. After the battle, he purchased a captaincy in the 85th Regiment of Foot.
In 1761, he was promoted to Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel. He led his regiment in the Battle of Villinghausen on 15–16 July 1761, was noted for his gallantry. In 1762 his regiment was involved in heavy fighting during the Battle of Wilhelmsthal. A few weeks they defeated Saxon troops at the Battle of Lutterberg and ended the year by participating in the Siege of Cassel. In January 1760 Cornwallis became a Member of Parliament, entering the House of Commons for the village of Eye in Suffolk, he succeeded his father as 2nd Earl Cornwallis in 1762, which resulted in his elevation to the House of Lords. He became a protege of the leading Whig magnate, future Prime Minister, Lord Rockingham, he was one of five peers. In the following years, he maintained a strong degree of support for the colonists during the tensions and crisis that led to the War of Independence. On 14 July 1768 he married daughter of a regimental colonel; the union was, by all accounts, happy. They settled in Culford, where their children and Charles were born.
Jemima died
Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer and frontiersman, whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his settlement of what is now Kentucky, it was still considered part of Virginia but was on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains from most European-American settlements. As a young adult, Boone supplemented his farm income by hunting and trapping game, selling their pelts in the fur market. Through this occupational interest, Boone first learned the easy routes to the area. Despite some resistance from American Indian tribes such as the Shawnee, in 1775, Boone blazed his Wilderness Road from North Carolina and Tennessee through Cumberland Gap in the Cumberland Mountains into Kentucky. There, he founded the village of Boonesborough, one of the first American settlements west of the Appalachians. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 Americans migrated to Kentucky/Virginia by following the route marked by Boone.
Boone served as a militia officer during the Revolutionary War, which, in Kentucky, was fought between the American settlers and British-allied Native Americans, who hoped to expel the Americans. Boone was captured by Shawnee warriors in 1778, he alerted Boonesborough that the Shawnee were planning an attack. Although outnumbered, Americans repelled the Shawnee warriors in the Siege of Boonesborough. Boone was elected to the first of his three terms in the Virginia General Assembly during the Revolutionary War, he fought in the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782. Blue Licks, a Shawnee victory over the Patriots, was one of the last battles of the Revolutionary War, coming after the main fighting ended in October 1781. Following the war, Boone worked as a surveyor and merchant, but fell into debt through failed Kentucky land speculation. Frustrated with the legal problems resulting from his land claims, in 1799, Boone emigrated to eastern Missouri, where he spent most of the last two decades of his life.
Boone remains an iconic figure in American history. He was a legend in his own lifetime after an account of his adventures was published in 1784, framing him as the typical American frontiersman. After his death, he was the subject of heroic tall tales and works of fiction, his adventures—real and legendary—were influential in creating the archetypal frontier hero of American folklore. In American popular culture, he is remembered as one of the foremost early frontiersmen; the epic Daniel Boone mythology overshadows the historical details of his life. Daniel Boone was of English West Welsh ancestry; because the Gregorian calendar was adopted during his lifetime, Boone's birth date is sometimes given as November 2, 1734, although Boone used the October date. The Boone family belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, called "Quakers", were persecuted in England for their dissenting beliefs. Daniel's father, Squire Boone emigrated from the small town of Bradninch, Devon to Pennsylvania in 1713, to join William Penn's colony of dissenters.
Squire Boone's parents, George Boone III and Mary Maugridge, followed their son to Pennsylvania in 1717, in 1720 built a log cabin at Boonecroft. In 1720, Squire Boone, who worked as a weaver and a blacksmith, married Sarah Morgan. Sarah's family were Quakers from Wales, had settled in 1708 in the area which became Towamencin Township of Montgomery County. In 1731, the Boones moved to Exeter Township in the Oley Valley of Berks County, near the modern city of Reading. There they built a log cabin preserved today as the Daniel Boone Homestead. Daniel Boone was born there, the sixth of eleven children; the Daniel Boone Homestead is four miles from the Mordecai Lincoln House, making the Squire Boone family neighbors of Mordecai Lincoln, the great-great-grandfather of future president Abraham Lincoln. Mordecai's son named Abraham, married Ann Boone, a first cousin of Daniel. Daniel Boone spent his early years on what was the edge of the frontier. Several Lenape Indian villages were nearby; the pacifist Pennsylvania Quakers had good relations with the Native Americans, but the steady growth of the white population compelled many Indians to move further west.
Boone was given his first rifle at the age of 12. He learned to hunt from the Lenape. Folk tales have emphasized Boone's skills as a hunter. In one story, the young Boone was hunting in the woods with some other boys, when the howl of a panther scattered all but Boone, he calmly shot the predator through the heart just as it leaped at him. The validity of this claim is contested, but the story was told so that it became part of his popular image. In Boone's youth, his family became a source of controversy in the local Quaker community when two of the oldest children married outside the endogamous community, in present-day Lower Gwynedd Township, Pennsylvania. In 1742, Boone's parents were compelled to apologize publicly after their eldest child, married John Willcockson, a "worldling"; because the young couple had "kept company", they were considered "married without benefit of clergy". When the Boones' oldest son Israel married a "worldling" in 1747, Squire Boone stood by him. Both men were expelled from the Quakers.
In 1750, Squire Boone moved the family to North Carolina. Daniel Boone did not attend church again, he had all of his children baptized. The Boones
Simon Girty
Simon Girty, was an American colonial of Irish descent who served as a liaison between the British and their Indian allies during the American Revolution. He was portrayed as a villain, was featured this way in 19th and early 20th-century United States fiction; as children and his brothers were taken captive in Pennsylvania in a Seneca raid and adopted. He lived with the Seneca for seven years and became assimilated, preferring their culture, he retained a sympathy for the Indians. Simon Girty was born to Mary Newton near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Simon Girty the Elder arrived in North America in 1730 from Ireland; the accepted spelling of Girty's name was most a "colonial derivation of McGearty, Garrity, Geraghty or Girtee" and a corruption and Anglicization of an older native Irish surname Mag Oireachtach. After establishing a trading post, Simon Girty the Elder and Mary Newton had four sons: Thomas, Simon and George, in 1739–1746. In May 1750, the Sheriff arrested the entire Girty family, along with other squatters, for building a home on Sherman's Creek on the Susquehanna River, before the British authorities allowed any settlers to build there.
The British authorities—specifically, George Croghan—also burned down the Girty home, shed and corral. All squatters were forced to post bonds of £500 each, were bound for trial at Cumberland County, Pennsylvania Court. In December 1750, Simon Girty the Elder and Samuel Sanders fought, or dueled, which ended with Girty's death. After both men fired a shot and missed, they pulled out their swords. "Girty fell. Sanders treacherously run him through with his sword, which caused his death". Saunders was either a "convict, an escaped bond servant, a soldier, or a rival trader who competed with Girty and murdered him to steal his trade goods". Samuel Sauders was subsequently arrested, tried in Philadelphia, convicted of manslaughter, imprisoned. One source says that Simon Girty the Elder's head was split with a tomahawk by an Indian called "The Fish", that John Turner, his half-brother, avenged Girty by killing "The Fish". Thomas McKee and George Gibson applied for Simon Girty the Elder's estate and persuaded William Plumsted, the mayor of Philadelphia, to backdate their application by a full year to make it appear legal.
McKee claimed Girty owed him £300 for trade goods he sold to Girty on credit. Plumsted went along with Gibson and McKee's scheme, McKee was subsequently awarded Girty's estate. Three years after Simon Girty the Elder was killed, his wife Mary married John Turner, his half-brother, they settled near to the land once owned by Simon Girty the Elder. In 1754, John Turner Jr. was born. During the French and Indian War, the area where they had their farm became too dangerous, with numerous war parties attacking settlers, so John Turner took his new family to Fort Granville on the Juniata River in western Pennsylvania, along with dozens of other English families looking for safety. At Fort Granville, John Turner joined the local militia under Captain Edward Ward and was promoted to Sergeant, Ward's third in command. On August 2, 1756, Captain Ward had taken the majority of the militia out on patrol, known to the local Lenape tribe. Captain François Coulon de Villiers attacked Fort Granville with 55 French soldiers and about 100 Lenape Indians.
Villiers' force set the stockade on fire. This made a large hole, through which they killed an officer and an enlisted man, wounded several men who were fighting the fire. Villiers offered quarter if the fort surrendered, so John Turner, as the ranking living officer, opened the gate. After marching the prisoners away from the fort, the French and Lenape plundered the fort and burned it to the ground; the Lenape took the prisoners to Kittanning, their village on the Allegheny River. The Lenape had traded with Simon Girty the Elder, they recognized his wife and children. One tradition says the Lenape sincerely believed that John Turner was the man who had killed Simon Girty the Elder in order to take his house and family. Other traditions say that the Lenape recognized him as Girty's avenger and killer of "The Fish", or that they thought that John Turner had badly beaten an Indian. For whichever reason, Chief Jacobs of the Lenape and his council condemned John Turner to be burned at the stake; the Muncey Lenape pushed red-hot gun barrels through John Turner's body.
John Turner endured three hours of ritualistic torture before he was scalped, a young Lenape struck a tomahawk into his brain, killing him, all in front of his wife and newborn baby. Thomas Girty escaped his Lenape captivity during the British-led Kittanning Expedition on September 8, 1756. After the Kittanning Expedition, the Indians split the Girty family up. Thirteen-year-old James Girty was taken by Shawnee warriors, as were baby John Turner; the Lenape kept 10-year-old George Girty. Fifteen-year-old Simon Girty was given to Guyasuta, Chief of the Ohio Seneca, lived in a village near Lake Erie's east shore in northwestern Pennsylvania. After he gained the respect of the Mingoes by running the gauntlet the Mingo pulled out all of Simon Girty's hair, leaving just a scalplock on his crown. Simon was given "breechcoth and leggings, a deerskin shirt, moccasins". Simon Girty lived with Guyasuta for seven years, he was returned to the British in November 1764, during a prisoner exchange after the end of
Lochry's Defeat
Lochry's Defeat known as the Lochry massacre, was a battle fought on August 24, 1781, near present-day Aurora, Indiana, in the United States. The battle was part of the American Revolutionary War, which began as a conflict between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies before spreading to the western frontier, where American Indians entered the war as British allies; the battle was short and decisive: about one hundred Indians of local tribes led by Joseph Brant, a Mohawk military leader, temporarily in the west, ambushed a similar number of Pennsylvania militiamen led by Archibald Lochry. Brant and his men captured all of the Pennsylvanians without suffering any casualties. Lochry's force was part of an army being raised by George Rogers Clark for a campaign against Detroit, the British regional headquarters. Clark, the preeminent American military leader on the northwestern frontier, worked with Governor Thomas Jefferson of Virginia in planning an expedition to capture Detroit, by which they hoped to bring an end to British support of the Indian war effort.
In early August 1781, Clark and about 400 men left Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania by boat, floating down the Ohio River a few days ahead of Lochry and his men, who were trying to catch up. Joseph Brant's force was part of a combined British and Indian army being raised to counter Clark's offensive. Brant had too few men to challenge Clark, but when he intercepted messengers traveling between Clark and Lochry, he learned about Lochry's smaller group bringing up the rear; when Lochry landed to feed his men and horses, Brant launched his overwhelmingly successful ambush. Because Clark had been able to recruit only a fraction of the men he needed for his campaign, the loss of Lochry's men resulted in the cancellation of Clark's expedition. In the Ohio River valley, the American Revolutionary War was fought between American colonists south and west of the Ohio River and American Indians with their British allies north of the river. From Detroit, the British recruited and supplied Indian war parties to attack American forts and settlements, hoping to divert American military resources from the primary theater of war in the East as well as keeping the Indians—and the lucrative fur trade—firmly attached to the British Empire.
Indians of the Ohio Country the Shawnee, Mingo and Wyandot, hoped to drive American settlers out of Kentucky and reclaim their hunting grounds, which they had lost in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix and Lord Dunmore's War. The Americans sought to hold on to Kentucky and to secure territorial claims to the region by launching sporadic expeditions against hostile Indian settlements north of the Ohio River. George Rogers Clark, a Virginia militia officer in Kentucky, believed that the Americans could win the border war by capturing Detroit, he laid the groundwork for this objective in 1779 by seizing the British outpost of Vincennes and capturing the British commander of Detroit, lieutenant governor Henry Hamilton. "This stroke", said Clark, "will nearly put an end to the Indian War." Clark prepared for a Detroit campaign in 1779 and again in 1780, but each time called off the expedition because of insufficient men and supplies. "Detroit lost for want of a few Men", he lamented. In late 1780, Clark traveled east to consult with Thomas Jefferson, the governor of Virginia, about an expedition in 1781.
Jefferson devised a plan which called for Clark to lead 2,000 men against Detroit, with the hope of preventing a rumored British offensive against Kentucky. To avoid potential conflicts over rank with Continental Army colonels while organizing the campaign, Clark requested that Jefferson promote him to brigadier general in the Continental Army. Army rules precluded Clark from receiving a Continental commission, because Clark held his colonel's commission from Virginia rather than the United States. Jefferson instead promoted Clark to the Virginia rank of "Brigadier General of the forces to be embodied on an expedition westward of the Ohio". In January 1781, Clark left for Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania to assemble his supplies, his goal was to have the expedition ready for departure from Fort Pitt by June 15. As with earlier campaigns, recruiting enough men was a problem. Jefferson called for the western counties of Virginia to provide militia manpower for Clark's campaign, but county officials protested that they could not spare the men.
Militiamen did not want to set out on a lengthy expedition—they would be gone for six months to a year—while their families and homes were threatened by Lord Cornwallis's army in the east, by Indian raids from the north, by Loyalists at home. Because of this resistance, Jefferson called for volunteers rather than ordering the militia to accompany the expedition. In addition to volunteers, Jefferson arranged for a regiment of 200 regular Continental soldiers under Colonel John Gibson to accompany Clark. Longstanding tensions between Continental Army officers and the militia made such cooperation problematic, however. Colonel Daniel Brodhead, the Continental Army commander at Fort Pitt, refused to detach men for Clark's campaign because he was staging his own expedition against the Delaware Indians, who had entered the war against the Americans. Brodhead marched into the Ohio Country and destroyed the Delaware Indian capital of Coshocton in April 1781; this resulted in the Delaware becoming more determined enemies, deprived Clark of badly needed men and supplies for the Detroit campaign.
Clark had problems recruiting men from Pennsylvania: lingering resentment due to the settled border dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania meant that few Pennsylvanians were
Kentucky Militia of Virginia State Forces
Great Britain
