Page 65 - Demo

CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787%u20131820 267caused Britain to agree, in Jay%u2019s Treaty (1795), to reduce its trade and military aid to Native Americans in the trans-Appalachian region.The Greenville treaty sparked a wave of white migration. Kentucky already had a population of 73,000 in 1790, and in 1792 it was admitted to the Union as the fifteenth state (Vermont entered a year earlier). Tennessee, Kentucky%u2019s neighbor to the south, was admitted in 1796. By 1800, more than 375,000 people had moved into the Ohio and Tennessee valleys; in 1805, the new state of Ohio alone had more than 100,000 residents. Thousands more farm families moved into the future states of Indiana and Illinois, sparking new conflicts with Native peoples over land and hunting rights. Between 1790 and 1810, farm families settled as much land as they had during the entire colonial period. The United States %u201cis a country in flux,%u201d a visiting French aristocrat observed in 1799, and %u201cthat which is true today as regards its population, its establishments, its prices, its commerce will not be true six months from now.%u201dAssimilation Rejected To dampen further conflicts, the U.S. government encouraged Native Americans to assimilate into white society. The goal, as one Kentucky Protestant minister put it, was to make the Native American %u201ca farmer, a citizen of the United States, and a Christian.%u201d Most Native Americans rejected wholesale assimilation; even those who joined Christian churches retained many ancestral values and religious beliefs. Why was assimilation so unappealing to most Native Americans? To think of themselves as individuals or members of a nuclear family, as white Americans were demanding, meant repudiating the clan and its extended kin lineages, the very essence of Native American life. To preserve %u201cthe old Indian way,%u201d many Native American communities expelled white missionaries and forced residents who had accommodated themselves to Christianity to participate in Indigenous rites. As a Munsee prophet declared, %u201cThere are two ways to God, one for the whites and one for the Indians.%u201dA few Native American leaders sought a middle path in which new beliefs overlapped with old practices. Among the Senecas, the prophet Handsome Lake encouraged traditional rituals that gave thanks to the sun, the earth, water, plants, and animals. But he included Christian elements in his teachings%u2014the conceptsof heaven and hell and an emphasis on personal morality%u2014to deter his followers from alcohol, gambling, and witchcraft. Handsome Lake%u2019s teachings divided the Senecas into hostile factions. Led by Chief Red Jacket, traditionalists condemned European culture as evil and demanded a complete return to ancestral ways.Most Native Americans also rejected the efforts of American missionaries to turn warriors into farmers and women into domestic helpmates. Among eastern woodland peoples, women grew corn, beans, and squash%u2014the mainstays of Indigenous diets%u2014and land cultivation rights passed through the female line. Consequently, women exercised considerable political influence, which they were eager to retain. Nor were most Indigenous men interested in becoming farmers. When war raiding and hunting were no longer possible, many turned to grazing cattle and sheep.skills & processesDEVELOPMENTS AND PROCESSESWhy did the United States go to war against western Indigenous nations so quickly after the Revolution?The Treaty of Greenville, 1795 Coming at the conclusion of several years of punishing warfare, this treaty was the first meaningful diplomatic agreement between the United States and the Native peoples of the trans-Appalachian west. The Western Confederacy ceded most of Ohio to the United States in exchange for a recognition of Native American ownership of lands beyond the cession, a large gift of merchandise, and the promise of an annual payment of federal funds. The United States also received permission to establish army posts at strategic locations on lands controlled by Native nations. This painting, attributed to an officer on General Anthony Wayne%u2019s staff, shows Wayne and William Henry Harrison at the head of the American delegation, while Little Turtle speaks for the Western Confederacy. Captain William Wells, kneeling nearby, acted as translator and scribe for the proceedings. Chicago History Museum/Getty Images.%u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.