The Northwest
Territory, also known as the Old Northwest, was formed from the unorganized
western territory of the United States after the American Revolutionary War, a triangular shaped area bordered
by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Great Lakes.
The
area included more than 300,000 square miles (780,000 km2) and
comprised about 1/3 of the land area of the United States at the time of its
creation. It was inhabited by about 45,000 Indigenous peoples and 4,000
traders, mostly Canadian and
British. Among the tribes inhabiting the region were the Shawnee, Delaware,
Miami, Huron, Ottawa and Potawatomi.
From the 1750s to
the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812, the British had a long-standing
goal of creating an Indian barrier state, a large Native American state that would cover
most of the Old Northwest. It would be independent of the United States and
allied with the British government, who would use it to block American westward expansion and
to build up their control of the fur trade headquartered
in Montreal.
A new colony, named Charlotina, was even proposed for the region before the events of Pontiac's War, after which the Crown issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which prohibited white colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. This action angered American colonists interested in expansion, as well as those who had already settled in the area. In 1774, by the Quebec Act, Britain annexed the region to the Province of Quebec in order to provide a civil government and to centralize British administration of the Montreal-based fur trade. The prohibition of settlement west of the Appalachians remained, contributing to the American Revolution.
Britain officially ceded the area north of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachians to the United States at the end of the American Revolutionary War with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, but continued to maintain a presence in the region until 1815 after the end of the British American War of 1812.
The Northwest Indian War of 1786-1795 and Tecumseh’s War of 1811-1813 were essentially a continuation of Pontiac’s War in 1763 as the Indigenous people living in the Northwest Territory continued their struggle to preserve an area for themselves in the face of relentless settler incursions.
Many Natives had allied
with the British in the western theatre of
the American Revolutionary War, seeking to drive out American settlers, and when
Britain ceded the region to the United States without any mention of Indigenous
land rights, they were outraged. The
British still maintained a military presence with various forts around the
Great Lakes but, while they continued policies that supported their Native
allies, they refused to get engaged directly with the Americans.
Numerous First Nations inhabited this region and, with the encroachment of European-American settlers west of the Appalachians after the War of Independence, a confederacy formed in 1785 to resist the usurpation of Indian lands, declaring that lands north and west of the Ohio River were Indian Territory.
Mohawk leader
Joseph Brant, who had fought as a British ally, took the lead in forming the
Northwestern Confederacy which included the Iroquois, Shawnees, Delawares, Three Fires/Anishinaabe Confederacy as well as Cherokees,
Creeks, and the Fox tribe.
After years of
skirmishes between militias and Native Americans, particularly the devastating Harmar
and St. Clair’s defeats (among the worst defeats ever for the U.S. army) the United
States was forced to rebuild its Army before launching a series of punitive
campaigns deep into the Great Lakes region.
In 1794 the Army finally defeated the Northwestern Confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Within months of Fallen Timbers, the United States and Britain negotiated the Jay Treaty, which required British withdrawal from the Great Lakes forts and encoded free trade and freedom of movement for First Nations living in territories controlled by either the United States or Great Britain. The Northwestern Confederacy fell apart and the war officially ended with the Treaty of Greenville, which granted to the United States control over most of the modern state of contested Ohio, but the First Nations were granted title to the rest of their lands in the Northwest in perpetuity, a commitment the U.S. government secretly agreed to ignore.
Tecumseh
In order to ensure control of the upper Mississippi River, President Jefferson instructed Governor Harrison to acquire as much land as possible, using deception if necessary. Harrison's tactics soon resulted in low-level conflict with various tribes which, in turn, led to the rise of the Tecumseh Confederacy.
Yet another confederation of Native Americans in the Great Lakes region of the United States began to form in the early 19th century, this time around the teachings of the Shawnee Tenskwatawa (The Prophet) who wanted his followers to return to their traditional ways. The Confederation grew over several years and came to include several thousand warriors. Tecumseh, the brother of The Prophet, developed into the leader of the group as early as 1808. Together they worked to unite the various tribes against the European settlers coming across the Appalachian Mountains and onto their land.
In 1811, an American military force under the leadership of Harrison engaged warriors of the Tecumseh Confederacy in the Battle of Tippecanoe and burned down their village named Prophetstown. In 1812 under Tecumseh's leadership, the confederation then joined with the British and went to war against the United States where they were instrumental in taking Detroit. However, Tecumseh later ended up dying in battle in 1813 at the Battle of the Thames at Moraviantown.
In 1812 the U.S. declared war on Britain. There were already long-standing
differences over U.S. territorial expansion in North America and
British support for Native American tribes who opposed U.S.
settlement in the Northwest Territory. These tensions escalated in 1807 after the Royal Navy began
enforcing tighter restrictions on American trade with France during the Napoleonic Wars and were aggravated by
the impressment of
men by the Royal Navy who claimed they were British subjects, even if they had
American citizenship certificates.
At sea, the far larger Royal Navy imposed an effective blockade on U.S. maritime trade, while between 1812-1814 British regulars and colonial militia defeated a series of American attacks on Upper Canada. This was balanced by the U.S. winning control of the Northwest Territory with victories at Lake Erie and the Thames in 1813. However, the abdication of Napoleon in early 1814 allowed the British to send additional troops to North America and enabled the Royal Navy to reinforce their blockade, thus crippling the American economy in the process. In later 1814, British troops burned Washington, before American victories at Baltimore and Plattsburgh ended fighting in the north.
The war continued in the Southeastern United States where, in late 1813, a civil war had broken out between a Creek faction supported by Spanish and British traders and those backed by the U.S. Supported by American militia under General Andrew Jackson, the U.S. faction won a series of victories, culminating in the capture of Pensacola in November 1814 and, in early 1815, Jackson defeated a British attack on New Orleans.
The 1814 Treaty of
Ghent, was the peace treaty that
ended the War of 1812 between
the United States and Britain. The Americans had wanted Britain to
turn Canada over to the United States and Britain wanted the creation of an
Indian barrier state bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Great
Lakes. Britain also wanted military control of the Great Lakes.
In the end Britain realized trade with the Americans was worth much more
than the fur trade in the barrier state and dropped its demands. Both sides
just wanted peace, so they agreed to restoring the prewar borders of June 1812.
At the subsequent Convention of 1818, the U.S. and Britain also agreed the 49th
parallel from Lake of the Woods to the Rockies would be the border between the
two sides.
The British insisted on restoring to the Indians, "all possessions, rights and privileges which they may have enjoyed, or been entitled to in 1811". However, as they were only considered dwellers in the United States who had recently made war upon her in co-operation with Britain, the Americans did not comply with any of these provisions. Sadly the British made no effort to compel them to do so, and once again Native grievances were ignored.