Red gentlemen and White savages
Subtitle: Indians, federalists, and the search for order on the American frontier
By: David Andrew Nichols.
Series: Jeffersonian America
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Charlottesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 291
ISBN-13: 9780813927688
Subjects: Indians of North America -- History -- 18th century; Indians of North America -- Treaties; Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1750-1815; Frontier and pioneer life -- United States -- History -- 18th century; United States -- Politics and government; United States -- History -- 18th century; United States -- Race relations
Genres: Treaties.
Description: "Red Gentlemen and White Savages argues that after the devastation of the American Revolutionary War, the main concern of Federalist and Indian leaders was not the transfer of land, but the restoration of social order on the frontier. Nichols focuses on the "middle ground" of Indian treaty conferences, where, in a series of encounters framed by the rituals of Native American diplomacy and the rules of Anglo-American gentility, U.S. officials and Woodland Indian civil chiefs built an uneasy alliance. The two groups of leaders learned that they shared common goals: both sought to control their "unruly young men"-disaffected white frontiersmen and Native American warriors-and both favored diplomacy, commerce, and established boundaries over military confrontation. Their alliance proved unstable. In their pursuit of peace and order along the frontier, both sets of leaders irreparably alienated their own followers. The Federalists lost power in 1800 to the agrarian expansionists of the Democratic-Republican Party, while the civil chiefs lost influence to the leaders of new, pan-Indian resistance movements. This shift in political power contributed to the outbreak of war between the United States, Britain, and Britain's Indian allies in 1812, and prepared the way for Indian Removal."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Post-revolutionary polyphony, 1783-1785; title: The evaporation of federal authority on the frontier, 1785-1786; title: Unruly young men; title: The "real Americans" draft a government, 1786-1788; title: "These haughty republicans" : the limitations of a gentleman's government, 1789-1790; title: War and appeasement, 1790-1793; title: Musket, quill, and calumet, 1794-1799.