9781422285978

Native American Wars on the Western Frontier, 1866-1890

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in peace. And still others believed the tribe should stay on its traditional lands, and fight to defend its territory. U.S. Government Policies The U.S. government recognized the opportunities for settlers expanding into western territories. In fact, one of the reasons that Americans had fought the Revolution was because King George III of Great Britain had prohibited the thirteen British colonies from expanding westward. To maintain peace as white settlers moved west, the government made many promises to the Native American tribes. Unfortunately, many of these promises were eventually broken. For example, a law called the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 said that the U.S. government would never allow settlement in the tribal lands to the south of the Great Lakes (present-day Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio), without the consent of the tribes. However, settlers ignored the restrictions and encroached on Indian land. Soon there was fighting, with the U.S. military sent to protect the settlers. An alliance of Shawnee, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Ojibway, Delaware, and other Great Lakes tribes, led by a chief of the Miami tribe named Little Turtle, won some early vic- tories. Soon, however, the chiefs realized they could not win. There were simply too many soldiers, and they were too well armed. So Little Turtle and other chiefs took money from the U.S. government in exchange for land. In the Treaty of Greenville, in 1795, the Native N ative Americans and white settlers had vastly different perspectives on land ownership. Land ownership was not important to Native Americans. They believed that the lands where they lived were the prop- erty of all members of the tribe, and could not be owned by any one per- son. American settlers, on the other hand, believed in private land own- ership. These disparate views prompted the Native American frontier wars, which are often referred to as the longest wars in U.S. history. NATIVE AMERICANS AND LAND OWNERSHIP