page_title: History of Native Americans in the United States
section_title: American Revolution
hierarchical_section_title: History of Native Americans in the United States / 18th century / American Revolution
caption_attribution_description: An eighteenth-century oil painting owned by the Winterthur Museum claims to depict James Oglethorpe presenting the Yamacraw Indians to the Georgia Trustees, an event on July 3, 1734, one year after Oglethorpe landed to start the new colony. The 25 bewigged and befrocked Englishmen have been identified. Oglethorpe is standing in the center, receiving an Indian boy by the hand. This suggests the Christianization of Indians, one of the chartered purposes of the philanthropic Georgia colony. The boy is dressed in English style, while the Indian men are in native dress. The Savannah trader John Musgrove (d. 1735) mediates as interpreter. Oglethorpe had boasted that the Lower Creek Nation "is within half a mile of us and has concluded a peace with us giving up their right to all this part of the country… The king comes regularly to church and is desirous to be instructed in the Christian religion and has given to me his nephew, a boy who is his next heir, to educate." The one Indian woman in the painting, also portrayed in English dress, is Tomochichi’s wife Senawchi. The other Indians are usually identified simply as "Indians," though sometimes they are called Creek or "Yamacraw."
context_page_description: The history of Native Americans in the United States began in ancient times tens of thousands of years ago with the settlement of the Americas by the Paleo-Indians. Anthropologists and archeologists have identified and studied a wide variety of cultures that existed during this era. Their subsequent contact with Europeans had a profound impact on the history of their people.
context_section_description: During the American Revolution, the newly proclaimed United States competed with the British for the allegiance of Native American nations east of the Mississippi River. Most Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, based both on their trading relationships and hopes that colonial defeat would result in a halt to further colonial expansion onto Native American land. Many native communities were divided over which side to support in the war and others wanted to remain neutral. The first native community to sign a treaty with the new United States Government was the Lenape. For the Iroquois Confederacy, based in New York, the American Revolution resulted in civil war. The only Iroquois tribes to ally with the colonials were the Oneida and Tuscarora.
  Frontier warfare during the American Revolution was particularly brutal, and numerous atrocities were committed by settlers and native tribes alike. Noncombatants suffered greatly during the war. Military expeditions on each side destroyed villages and food supplies to reduce the ability of people to fight, as in frequent raids by both sides in the Mohawk Valley and western New York. The largest of these expeditions was the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, in which American colonial troops destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages to neutralize Iroquois raids in upstate New York. The expedition failed to have the desired effect: Native American activity became even more determined.
  The British made peace with the Americans in the Treaty of Paris (1783), through which they ceded vast Native American territories to the United States without informing or consulting with the Native Americans. The Northwest Indian War was led by Native American tribes trying to repulse American settlers. The United States initially treated the Native Americans who had fought as allies with the British as a conquered people who had lost their lands. Although most members of the Iroquois tribes went to Canada with the Loyalists, others tried to stay in New York and western territories to maintain their lands. The state of New York made a separate treaty with Iroquois nations and put up for sale 5,000,000 acres (20,000 km²) of land that had previously been their territories. The state established small reservations in western New York for the remnant peoples.
  The Indians presented a reverse image of European civilization which helped America establish a national identity that was neither savage nor civilized.
  — Charles Sanford, The Quest for Paradise: Europe and the American Moral Imagination
caption: Yamacraw Creek Native Americans meet with the Trustee of the colony of Georgia in England, July 1734. The painting shows a Native American boy (in a blue coat) and woman (in a red dress) in European clothing.
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