A CRITICAL HISTORY OF COLONIZATION AND AMERINDIAN RESISTANCE IN TRANS-APPALACHIA 1750-1830: THE PROCLAMATION WARS BY ©2010 Richard Keith Arnold Submitted to the graduate degree program Global Indigenous Nations Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master's of Arts. ________________________ Chairperson Dr. John Hoopes ________________________ Dr. Andrew Whitford ________________________ Dr. Ray Pierotti Date Defended: February 26, 2010 The Thesis Committee for Richard Arnold certifies that this is the approved Version of the following thesis: A CRITICAL HISTORY OF COLONIZATION AND AMERINDIAN RESISTANCE IN TRANS-APPALACHIA 1750-1830: THE PROCLAMATION WARS Committee: ________________________ Chairperson Dr. John Hoopes Date Approved:04/15/2010 2 Abstract A careful examination of events in Colonial Trans-Appalachia—the region geographically encompassed by territories west of the Appalachian Mountain Range and east of the Mississippi River—at the time of the French and Indian War facilitates analysis of regime formation amongst Amerindian and European Colonists. This thesis examines the effects of contact on Amerindian and European polities in a form that seeks relevance to contemporary issues. It draws on historical timelines that immediately pre and post-date the French and Indian War. It argues how distinctive decision making structures used by Amerindian and European societies provide preliminary models for understanding how their respective forms of sociopolitical organization conditioned political relationships. 3 Acknowledgements Where to begin. I am deeply indebted to my wife Carlene who sacrificed much, maybe most, of our usual personal time during the early years of our marriage so that I could finish this work. There are not enough words. This also applies to Jerry Painter, Robert Francis, Susan Bates, and Steve Bartha. I am further grateful for the input and support I received from various professors who were either indirectly or directly involved in this thesis. For those indirectly involved, I would like to thank political science professor Dr. Schumaker for teaching a great political theory class and Professor Gaar for years of friendship as I made my way through the halls of the academy. She was my first political science professor. I would also like to think Dr. Middlemass who chaired my undergraduate thesis and helped prepare me for graduate school. As for my committee members I am grateful to my original Chair, Dr. Yellow Bird, who always provided a continual critique of the work I was developing so that I could consider alternative explanations and drove me to build a substantial evidentiary record. Dr. Yellow Bird left for a new position. My second Chair, Dr. Hoopes picked up where Dr. Yellow Bird left and pressed me to develop the theory from the evidentiary record by sharing a little of his own work which really opened up my creative and analytical thinking. Thank you. Both Dr. Yellow Bird and Dr. Hoopes are amazing individuals in that they both have fearless minds and are dedicated to an open discourse in academia. Both agreed to Chair my thesis while both were hard pressed for time. Again, thank you. I further would like to offer my gratitude to Dr. Whitford. He was a committee member on both my undergraduate and graduate thesis committees. He is also the first person I published a paper with. Working with Dr. Whitford has been a great pleasure because of his straightforward and candid approach to his working relationships. I have found him to hold high standards for students while also providing the kind of support that expands his students' horizons. I would also like to thank Dr. Pierotti for joining the committee at a late stage. He provided input that sort of anchored my thinking and allowed me to step back and re-evaluate some of my conceptual development. I would also like to thank the Global Indigenous Nations Departmental staff, especially Betty. The staffs at the Watson and Anschutz campus libraries were also very helpful. Lastly I would like to thank my classmates who I entered the program with. 4 Table of Contents Section I Chapter 1 Introduction to the Issues ................................................................................. 6 Chapter 2 Amerindian Nationalism ............................................................................... 31 Chapter 3 An Analysis of Conflicts, Proclamations, and Consequences ......................... 54 Section II Chapter 4 The Ohio Frontier .......................................................................................... 89 Chapter 5 Six Nations a Frontier Broker ...................................................................... 100 Chapter 6 The Nations of the Ohio .............................................................................. 118 Chapter 7 The Path to Civilization ............................................................................... 132 Chapter 8 Montreal Union ........................................................................................... 149 Section III Chapter 9 Models of Democracy, Colonialism, and State Formation ........................... 165 Appendix: Maps .......................................................................................................... 197 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 202 5 Section I Chapter 1 - Introduction to the Issues This study will look at the role of trade and land tenure in the conflicts that arose in Colonial Trans-Appalachia, defined temporally as the period between 1754 and 1812 in the geographic region west of Appalachian Mountain Range and east of the Mississippi River. Trade and land tenure were central to regime formation during this time in this region. From the axes of the various regimes the origins to competing national and state ventures can be articulated. Colonial Trans-Appalachia represents a critical era in North American history. The outcomes of the region’s struggles determined to a decisive degree the future course of North America. Trans- Appalachian wars settled many disputes among Europeans who had been jockeying for North American possessions and eventually the relationship among Colonial Europeans and their parent countries. Yet, some are unresolved as present day Quebec gives an apposite voice to an ethnic Colonial French nationalism. The Amerindian, or American struggle to retain an independent status has continued to this day.A The French and Indian War (1754-1763), maybe better stated as the French and Indian War, essentially failed to resolve the imperial contest between England and France in North America. The French and Indian War named from the perspective of the Anglo Saxon was much more complex in its geo-political dynamics than simply a struggle pitting the British against the A Scholar Forbes (1993) discusses the repopulation of the Americas by identifying the indigenous populations of the North, Central, and South America as Americans while identifying migrant colonial populations in the Americas with the prefix of their continents of origin. For example, Euro-Americans or African-Americans. I originally decided on the term Amerindian to imply First Americans while admittedly not being entirely comfortable with the term. 6 French and their Amerindian allies. The war was also a contest that followed the earlier and much more indecisive failures of the King William’s War, Queen Anne’s War, and King George’s War in the 1740s.1 These wars conducted in the interest of expanding national trade empires in which local indigenous became exceedingly entangled. The war was initiated in the midst of English and French negotiations over a suitable boundary line between their two Colonial empires in North America. The negotiations continued during the war and included proposals that would limit both French and English claims to the continent. By default and intent this arrangement acknowledged an unoccupied zone in Trans-Appalachia wherein the residing Amerindian nations stood as a bulwark to further territorial expansion.2 At the time the British Colonies and the French would have been hard pressed to expand their empires into these interior regions. This is evident when considering the events of the French and Indian War. Furthermore, these negotiations were typical European solutions that precluded direct participation of Amerindian leadership. The conclusion of the French and Indian War initially seemed to provide an outcome in favor of British imperial interests. The North American experience had already been a partial or weighted successful British colonial venture with numerous coastline settler communities. However, the English were far from being free of French interference. Moreover, the British Imperial state would face continued dissension among its own colonies. Before the official peace that ended the war France transferred its claim to the Louisiana territory to Spain in hopes of preempting British hegemony on the continent. The British would at the conclusion of the American Revolution attempt to check the expansion of its former colonies by transferring territorial claims to southern Trans-Appalachia to the Spanish. The Spanish never effectively 7 fulfilled this role as a counter threat in the region’s balance of power dynamics even though they too parlayed with Amerindian nations to prevent the emergence of one dominant European