West of the Revolution.(book pages 1 thru 8)
The title of this chapter is an appreciative nod to the work of Professor Claudio Saunt, author of West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2014).
(page 3, par. 1, line 3) The Northwest Territory consisted of lands west of Pennsylvania, north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River. Its principal former territory encompasses five modern states: Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a portion of Minnesota. During the Confederation period 1781–1789 it was nominally governed under the Ordinances of 1784 and 1787.
(page 3, par. 1, lines 1-2) Rousseauist ideals of noble savages Freneau, Philip, and Harry Hayden Clark, eds. Poems of Freneau, 1929. For examples of romanticizing the Indian experience on the East Coast, while frontier depravities were the rule west of the Alleghenies, see Freneau’s poems “The Prophecy of King Tammany,” “The Dying Indian: Tomo-Chequi,” “The Indian Burying Ground,” “The Indian Student, or Force of Nature,” and “The Indian Convert.” Samuel S. Forman would become Freneau’s brother-in-law and work for a time for his elder brother-in-law in Philadelphia.
(page 3, par. 1, line 3) Middle Ground became a contested battle ground Richard White, The Middle Ground, p. 237 in relation to the French and Indian War in the Ohio Valley and Ch. 10 “Confederacies,” pp. 413-468.
(page 4, par. 2, lines 1-2) Following intermittent periods of accommodation and strife, Delaware Indian life in Samuel S. Forman’s New Jersey was a faint memory, The modern state of Delaware, within the wider Eastern mid-Atlantic region, was the Delaware Indians’ traditional homeland. The Delawares thought of themselves as one of the earliest peoples to settle the continent in the “Land of the Rising Sun.” Other tribes sometimes recognized the origin tales by addressing Delaware chiefs as Father, independent of more immediate political positioning between Nations and tribes. The Algonquian speaking Delaware Nation ranged over the entire Eastern mid-Atlantic region at the time of first contact with Europeans. A Lenape chief Tammany had met and negotiated symbiotically peaceful co-existence with William Penn in 1682 at Shakamaxon above Philadelphia. Like parallel early initial colonial contacts between Massasoit of the Wampanoag and in New England Pilgrims, and Wahunsenacawh of the Powhatan with the Jamestown colony in Virginia. In each instance years of peaceful coexistence degenerated into spasmodic vicious wars as imported diseases, increasing numbers of settlers, guns, and whiskey, conspired to overturn the pre-European contact way of life. Some tribes ceased existence altogether as distinct entities; their survivors absorbed into more resilient Nations. Traditional inter-Indian rivalries – now made more deadly with imported European muskets, steel tomahawks, and metal knives – added to the decimation of Indian populations. Surviving tribes generally moved or were pushed west.
(page 4, par. 2, lines 4-5) settlers’ envisioned farms, orchards, dairies, mills, mines, and nascent factories… Paraphrasing of “…habits of putting in farms, the enemies of the beaver” Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause – The American Revolution, 1763-1789. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 681.
(page 4, par. 5, lines 5-6) “We took pity on them, granted their request and they sat down amongst us” in Vanderwerth, W.C., ed. 1971. Indian Oratory – Famous Speeches by Noted Indian Chieftains. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma. p. 44. These are the words of Seneca chief Cornplanter addressing George Washington in 1792. Chief Red Jacket (Seneca) further lamented that “we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets” Ibid. Red Jacket’s (Seneca) speech, p. 45.
(page 5, par. 3, line 1) percent of settlers in Kentucky had been murdered Faragher, John Mack, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer, p.144. For a thorough treatment of the societal impact on settlers fostered by decades of extreme frontier violence, see: Perkins, Elizabeth Ann. “Border life: Experience and perception in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley”
(page 5, par. 4, lines 1-2) a community of neutral Indians, mostly Delawares converted to Christianity Sterner, Eric. “Moravians in the Middle: The Gnadenhutten Massacre.” Journal of the American Revolution, posted on-line February 2, 2018. Last accessed March 30, 2021.
(page 5, par. 5, lines 2-3) attacked and disrupted Coshocton, the principal Delaware town in Ohio Country Hurt, R. Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720–1830. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1996, p. 85-86. Coshocton sometimes is known by its Indian name Goshgoshgunk. Brodhead’s campaign was strategically inconclusive. Its unintended outcomes were to further enrage Delawares’ anti-American sentiment and fed the bloody cycles of violence and reprisals between Indians and Americans in the Ohio country. By the late 1780s the Delawares had relocated most of their more permanent settlements from central and southeast to northwest Ohio, alongside their Miami and Shawnee allies. However, their and their allies’ raiding and hunting parties ranged over the entire region with impunity.
(page 6, par. 1, lines 7-8) “Fell on them while they were singing hymns…” William Irvine as quoted by Calloway in The Indian World of George Washington, p. 275.
(page 5, par. 2, line 3) “an anti-Indian racist sentiment” Reid, Darren R. “Anti-Indian Radicalization in the Early American West, 1774-1795.” Journal of the American Revolution, posted June 19, 2017, last accessed March 30, 2021. Reid opines: “…European American inhabitants of the Trans-Appalachian country were confronted by two decades of almost unbroken, deeply violent, and intensely bitter conflict – their pre-existing negative bias, exposed to those conditions, was transformed into a negative certainty.” “There were cultures which accommodated Indian haters; after that period, however, there was, in the west, a culture which promoted and even demanded Indian hatred.”
(page 5, par. 3, line 4) Others moved on, north into British Canada or further west into Spanish Upper Luisiana Dispossession, western migrations and dispersion of the Delaware Indians comprise a case study within Bowes, John P. Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal. Additional accounts of the Delaware/Lenni Lenape movements from their traditional Eastern homeland in the “Land of the Rising Sun” to Pennsylvania, the Ohio Territory, and beyond are described by: Weslager, C.A. The Delaware Indians: A History; Schutt, A. Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians; and Kraft, Herbert C. The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage – 10,000 B.C.-A.D. 2000.
(page 5, par. 4, lines 4-5) “redouble their attacks on the Americans” Paraphrased from the Haldimand Papers 21756:94, 21799:109-110, as cited by Calloway in The Indian world of George Washington, p. 275.
(page 6, par. 2, lines 4-5) most tribes of the Northwest Indian Confederation were not a party to the negotiations Weslager, C.A. “Turmoil in Ohio” in: The Delaware Indians – A History. Ch. 13, pp. 282-328.
(page 7, par. 6, line 1) Spanish Governor Bérnardo de Gálvez See recent book length biographies: Caughey, John Walton. Bernardo de Gálvez in Louisiana; and Quintero Saravia, Gonzalo M. Bernardo de Gálvez: Spanish Hero of the American Revolution.
(page 7, par. 6, lines 3-5) supplying arms and munitions for use in the Americans’ western campaigns This surreptitious funneling of Spanish war material was carried out via Oliver Pollock’s New Orleans trading firm James Alton. Oliver Pollock – The Life and Times of an Unknown Patriot. Spanish allied support was as crucial in its way to winning American Independence as was the French Army and Navy’s assistance culminating in the victory at Yorktown. Chávez, Thomas E. Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift, p. 213-221.
(page 7, par. 5, line 1) Spanish Governor-General Bernardo de Gálvez held court at New Orleans, capital of Luisiana. Asserting sovereignty over a huge swath of territory, Gálvez had endeared himself to the Americans during the Revolution War for his surreptitious supplying, via Oliver Pollock’s New Orleans trading firm, of arms and munitions sent upriver for use in the Americans’ Western campaigns and, and for his wresting away of British West Florida via successful assaults on Natchez, Baton Rouge, Natchitoches, Fort Manchac, and Pensacola in 1781. Although Spain was a latecomer to the Franco-American alliance against Britain, the generosity its treasury, funneled through their envoy Diego de Gardoqui, was as crucial in its way as the French army and navy was to the Americans achieving a military victory at Yorktown. For Spain’s contributions to American Independence see Chávez, Thomas E. Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift, p. 213-221. For biographical details about Oliver Pollock and how he conducted his New Orleans based trading firm, see James Alton. Oliver Pollock – The Life and Times of an Unknown Patriot.