The history of the Kickapoo Wars is a complex tapestry woven with threads of displacement, alliance, resistance, and adaptation. Before encountering Europeans directly, the Kickapoo people felt the ripple effects of their presence, setting in motion a series of conflicts that would shape their destiny for centuries.
The Beaver Wars and Initial Displacement (1640s-1660s)
The 17th century brought turmoil to the Great Lakes region in the form of the Beaver Wars. Driven by the insatiable European demand for furs, the Tionontati, Ottawa, and Neutral tribes, eager to secure new hunting grounds for trade with the French, launched attacks against the Kickapoo and their neighbors, disrupting their traditional way of life.
The pressure intensified in the 1650s with a full-scale invasion by the Iroquois Confederacy. The Iroquois, armed with European weaponry and fueled by a desire to dominate the fur trade, relentlessly pushed westward. This onslaught forced the Kickapoo to abandon their ancestral homelands and seek refuge further west, migrating around the southern end of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River in southwestern Wisconsin.
A Region Overwhelmed (1660s)
The Kickapoo were not alone in their flight. The Iroquois offensive triggered a mass migration of tribes from the east, including the Fox, Sauk, Potawatomi, Mascouten, and Miami. These thousands of refugees descended upon southwestern Wisconsin, overwhelming the resident Winnebago and Menominee and encroaching upon their territories. The already strained resources of the region were further depleted.
The Dakota, also known as the Sioux, powerful inhabitants of the western territories, were far less welcoming. Clashes erupted across western Wisconsin as the newcomers vied for land and resources, escalating the already volatile situation.
Struggles for Survival
The harsh climate of northern Wisconsin presented new challenges. Corn, a staple crop, proved difficult to cultivate, forcing the refugee tribes to rely more heavily on hunting. This increased dependence on dwindling game populations led to further conflict as tribes fought amongst themselves over scarce resources.
Adding to the misery, the influx of refugees brought with it the devastating impact of European diseases. Epidemics swept through the crowded settlements, decimating populations already weakened by war and famine. Iroquois war parties continued to harass the region, launching unpredictable attacks that kept the refugees in a constant state of fear.
Iroquois Dominance and French Involvement
The Iroquois Confederacy’s dominance continued to expand. In the spring of 1649, they overran and destroyed the Huron Confederation in southeastern Ontario. This victory was followed by the swift defeat of the Tionontati, Neutrals, and Erie tribes, with large portions of their populations absorbed into the Iroquois ranks. Emboldened by their successes, the Iroquois embarked on a campaign of conquest that swept across the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley.
The French, whose fur trade had been severely hampered by the Iroquois’ destruction of their native trading partners, attempted to salvage their operations by encouraging surviving tribes to bring their furs to Montreal. However, Iroquois war parties along the Ottawa River, the main trade route, made this a perilous undertaking. Only a few Ottawa and Ojibwe dared to organize large canoe convoys to brave the Iroquois blockade.
In 1653, the French, seeking to maintain a truce with the Iroquois, prohibited their own traders from traveling to the Great Lakes. But with the resumption of war in 1658, two French fur traders, Pierre Radisson and Médart Chouart des Groseilliers, defied the ban. Accompanied by the Jesuit missionary René Ménard, they joined a group of Wyandot traders on their return journey west. It was at Mackinac, near Sault Ste. Marie, that the French first heard of the Kickapoo, although an actual meeting would not occur for several more years.
First Encounters (1660s)
In 1665, Nicolas Perrot, Jesuit Claude-Jean Allouez, and six other Frenchmen joined a large party of Wyandot and Ottawa to fight their way past the Iroquois blockade on the Ottawa River. They reached Green Bay in September and spent the winter there.
Allouez, eager to re-establish contact with the Wyandot and Ottawa converts he had made before 1649, traveled to their village of Chequamegon (present-day Ashland, Wisconsin) on the south shore of Lake Superior. The population of Chequamegon was a mix of Wyandot, Ottawa, and Ojibwe, along with a smaller number of Potawatomi and Kickapoo.
It was not until 1667, however, that Allouez encountered a significant group of Kickapoo at another mixed village (Kickapoo/Miami/Mascouten) located at the Fox River portage in central Wisconsin. This encounter revealed that, although primarily residing in southwestern Wisconsin, the Kickapoo were scattered throughout the region.
Early Relations and French Influence
Father Allouez found the Kickapoo unreceptive to Christianity. Even French fur traders struggled to establish close ties with them, finding them aloof and reserved. Nicolas Perrot, however, proved to be an exception. He managed to earn their trust and friendship, establishing a trading post in 1685 on the Mississippi River near present-day Dubuque, Iowa.
The same year that Allouez met the Kickapoo at the Fox Portage (1667), the French forged a peace treaty with the Iroquois, which, for the first time, extended to French allies and trading partners in the western Great Lakes.
Rebuilding the Fur Trade (1670s-1680s)
Over the next decade, the French focused on rebuilding their fur trade in the west. By mediating disputes among the refugee tribes in Wisconsin, they brought a degree of order to the region and laid the foundation for a future alliance to defend against the Iroquois.
Meanwhile, the Iroquois turned their attention to their war with the Susquehannock in Pennsylvania. After defeating the Susquehannock in 1675, they looked westward again in 1680, discovering that Illinois hunters were encroaching on lands they had conquered in the 1650s. Their protests resulted in the murder of a Seneca sachem during a meeting with the Illinois.
The Second Phase of the Beaver Wars (1680s-1690s)
This incident sparked the second phase of the Beaver Wars, with the Seneca retaliating against the Illinois Confederation. The initial attempt to organize an alliance against the Iroquois faltered, but by 1687, the French had successfully forged a formidable alliance.
The French launched an offensive against the Iroquois in 1687, a date that coincided with the outbreak of King William’s War (1688-97) between Britain and France. Motivated more by their strong friendship with Perrot than by a general affinity for the French, the Kickapoo joined this alliance.
Iroquois Retreat and Trade Disruptions (1690s)
By the 1690s, the Iroquois were retreating eastward across the Great Lakes towards New York. Simultaneously, their homeland was under attack from French soldiers and native allies from Quebec. The war between Britain and France concluded in 1697 with the Treaty of Ryswick, which placed the Iroquois League under British protection.
Fearing British intervention, the French attempted to halt their allies’ war with the Iroquois, a task made difficult by the Algonquin’s suspicion that the French might abandon them and make a separate peace with the Iroquois. It took four years for the French to persuade them to agree to the peace signed in 1701.
A significant factor complicating matters was the French’s own trade policy. Despite the ongoing warfare, the amount of beaver pelts reaching Montreal had increased dramatically during the war, leading to a glut in the European market and a subsequent drop in prices. Yielding to Jesuit complaints about the corrupting influence of the fur trade on native populations, Louis XIV issued a royal decree in 1696 suspending the fur trade in the western Great Lakes.
All trading licenses, including Perrot’s, were revoked. While seemingly sound economic policy in Paris, this decision proved disastrous for the French in Canada. Trade was the glue that held their alliance together, and without it, they lacked the native allies necessary to defend Canada from the British. Governor Frontenac delayed the implementation of the decree, but was eventually replaced for his efforts.
Alliance Unraveling (Early 1700s)
The hard-won alliance that the French had forged among the Great Lakes Algonquin unraveled rapidly without trade goods. This was evident in the difficulty the French encountered in persuading their allies to agree to peace with the Iroquois, and it had dire consequences for several French traders in the western Great Lakes.
The drop in European prices meant that native hunters received fewer trade goods for the same amount of fur. Lacking an understanding of supply and demand, this was perceived as French greed and selfishness.
Furthermore, the French had begun trading with the Dakota in 1680, a source of considerable irritation to the refugee tribes in Wisconsin who considered the Dakota their enemies.
Renewed Conflict and the Fox Wars (Early 1700s)
War erupted during the 1690s over hunting territory along the upper Mississippi between the refugees and the Dakota. Caught in the middle, the French, burdened by trade restrictions and falling prices, could do little to prevent it.
They became targets as the Fox, Sauk, Mascouten, Miami, and Kickapoo grew increasingly resentful of French trade with their enemies. Traders were robbed and murdered, and even the highly respected Perrot found himself tied to a Mascouten torture stake, facing imminent death by burning. His friends among the Kickapoo intervened and saved his life. Discouraged and with his trade permit revoked, Perrot returned to Quebec, taking with him the secret of how to win the friendship of the Kickapoo.
The Iroquois saw an opportunity to reverse their military defeat through economic warfare, offering French allies access to British traders at Albany. With the approach of Queen Anne’s War (1701-13), the French government relented and allowed the establishment of a single new trading post to retain the loyalty of the Great Lakes Algonquin.
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac built Fort Pontchartrain near Detroit in 1701 and invited the Ottawa and Huron to settle nearby. But with only one trading post to compete with the British and Iroquois, Cadillac was soon compelled to invite nearly every tribe in the Great Lakes to settle in the area.
Rather than strengthening the alliance, the crowded conditions fostered competition for land and hunting territory. Ignoring the warning signs, Cadillac extended an invitation to the Fox in 1710. Over 1,000 Fox, Kickapoo, and Mascouten arrived at Detroit, the Fox returning to what they claimed was their ancestral homeland.
The Fox were not shy about asserting their historical claim and demanding special privileges, leading other French allies to demand their removal. Cadillac, however, ignored their concerns.
Rumors circulated that the Fox were secretly negotiating trade agreements with the Iroquois. The other tribes near Detroit ensured that these rumors reached the French.
In 1712, a Mascouten hunting party was attacked in southern Michigan by Potawatomi and Ottawa, fleeing east to their Fox and Kickapoo allies near Detroit. As the Fox, Kickapoo, and Mascouten prepared to retaliate, the French at Fort Pontchartrain attempted to intervene. This proved to be the breaking point, and the Fox and Kickapoo attacked Fort Ponchartrain, igniting the first Fox War (1712-16). The initial assault failed, followed by a siege.
The Fox suffered a devastating blow when a relief force of Huron, Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi attacked them from the rear, resulting in the massacre of over 1,000 Fox warriors.
Back in Wisconsin, the Fox and Kickapoo retaliated by killing French traders and attacking French allies. After three years of this, the other tribes of the alliance demanded French intervention. The French were ineffective until trade restrictions were lifted after the death of Louis XIV in 1715.
This allowed the French to reconcile disputes between the Miami and Illinois, and the Ojibwe and Green Bay Potawatomi. With their alliance restored, the French were better equipped to deal with the Fox.
A combined French and Potawatomi expedition attacked the Kickapoo and Mascouten villages in southern Wisconsin in 1715, forcing the Kickapoo and Mascouten to make a separate peace.
Isolated, the Fox regrouped and fortified a village, continuing their resistance. After an unsuccessful attempt to take the fort, the frustrated French offered peace, which the battered but defiant Fox accepted.
The Second Fox War (1720s-1730s)
Hostilities between the Fox and Peoria (Illinois) continued. The Peoria had tortured Fox prisoners captured at Detroit in 1712, and the Fox had apparently reciprocated by torturing Peoria prisoners. After the war, the Peoria refused to return the Fox prisoners they held.
The Illinois were unpopular, and the Fox had little trouble finding allies to fight them. By 1724, they had enlisted the Kickapoo, Mascouten, Dakota, and Winnebago into an alliance that was largely hostile to French interests.
West of the Mississippi, the Fox and their allies were engaged in a second war with the Osage, who were disrupting French fur trade along the Missouri River. After repeated failed attempts to mediate a truce, the French became convinced that the Fox were part of a British plot.
The French decided to eliminate the Fox, first taking the precaution of isolating them from their allies through diplomacy and treaties. By the time the Second Fox War began (1728-37), only the Kickapoo and Mascouten still stood by the Fox.
The French and their allies struck swiftly, first attacking the Kickapoo and Winnebago and forcing them west of the Mississippi. The Fox then proved to be their own worst enemies.
At a meeting, an argument over the Kickapoo’s refusal to kill some of their French prisoners led the Fox to storm out and murder a Kickapoo and Mascouten who happened to cross their path. Enraged, the Kickapoo and Mascouten switched sides in 1729 and joined the French.
The following year, Kickapoo and Mascouten warriors helped the French and their allies surround the Fox in northern Illinois as they attempted to flee east to the Seneca. Over 600 Fox were killed in this battle, leaving only the 600 Fox who had sought refuge with the Sauk in northern Wisconsin.
By 1732, the French had decided to exterminate the Fox. Those not killed were to be sold as slaves to the West Indies. This proved too much for the Kickapoo. When a French expedition was sent after the Fox and Sauk in Iowa in 1736, the Kickapoo guides are believed to have deliberately led it in circles through every swamp in western Wisconsin.
Other tribes began to express their reservations, and, faced with a potential revolt of their allies, the French were forced to make peace with the Fox and Sauk in 1737. During the years of warfare between the Fox and Peoria, the Kickapoo were able to expand southward. By the 1720s, some groups had relocated along the Milwaukee River in southern Wisconsin.
Exploiting epidemics that decimated the Illinois and Miami populations between 1718 and 1736, the Kickapoo left Wisconsin entirely and pushed south into the buffalo prairies of northern Illinois and Indiana.
In addition to better hunting and richer farmland, they gained better access to British and Iroquois traders. For the most part, the Kickapoo remained aloof from Europeans in general, content to allow other tribes (Miami, Fox, Sauk, and Illinois) to manage their diplomatic and trade relations with them, even the French.
The Kickapoo and the French Alliance (Mid-1700s)
Throughout the 1700s, the Kickapoo’s loyalty appeared to lie more with the tribes of the French alliance than with the French themselves. For this reason, Kickapoo warriors participated in the French war with the Chickasaw between 1732 and 1752, not for the sake of the French, but as allies of the Miami and Illinois.
When British traders began visiting Ohio for direct trade during the 1740s, the Kickapoo were drawn to their trade goods, which were often cheaper and of higher quality than what the French could offer. Even then, the Kickapoo traded primarily through the Miami, maintaining limited direct contact.
Although the Kickapoo had switched sides in 1729 and helped the French decimate the Fox, their southward movement brought them into conflict with another French ally, the Illinois.
Division and Divergence
Over the next 20 years, the Kickapoo gradually separated into two distinct groups, which were not always on good terms with each other. The western group in northern Illinois became known as the Prairie Band and maintained their alliance with the Fox and Sauk in their war against the Osage west of the Mississippi.
The second Kickapoo group, the future Vermillion band, grew closer to the Miami. The Vermillion were generally friendlier with the Illinois and frequently intermarried with them. The Prairie Band, however, remained hostile to the Illinois, particularly the Peoria, who by this time were a separate tribe from the rest of the Illinois Confederation.
In 1752, the Prairie Band of Kickapoo joined the Fox and Sauk in yet another war against the Illinois.
As allies of the Miami and Detroit tribes, the Vermillion Kickapoo fought for the French during the French and Indian War (1755-63). However, the Great Lakes tribes’ contribution was curtailed during the winter of 1757-58 when their warriors contracted smallpox during the siege of Fort William Henry in New York and carried it back to their villages.
By the time they had recovered, the tide had turned in favor of the British. After the British capture of Quebec and Fort Niagara in 1759, the war for North America was effectively over.
British Policies and Pontiac’s Rebellion (1760s)
Montreal and Detroit were occupied in 1760, leaving only Louisiana, Fort de Chartres, and the Illinois country under French control. The British then repeated the mistake the French had made in 1701, implementing policies that undermined their victory.
The British military commander, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, regarded the Great Lakes tribes as conquered enemies. He terminated annual gifts, restricted trade goods (particularly gunpowder), and increased prices.
The consequences were disastrous. The only readily available commodity was rum from unlicensed white traders. Attempting to repair the damage, Sir William Johnson, the British Indian commissioner, met with the tribes of the former French alliance at Detroit in 1761. All attended except the Illinois and Mackinac Ojibwe, who remained hostile.
The Wabash Kickapoo also attended, but, in their typical fashion, allowed the Miami to speak for them. Johnson could offer little beyond talk and promises, but he did learn that the Seneca were calling for a general uprising due to the trade restrictions. Only the Delaware and Shawnee responded, but unrest continued to simmer, awaiting a leader.
The Influence of Neolin and Pontiac (1760s)
Widespread crop failures and epidemics occurred in 1762. It was at this moment that a native prophet, Neolin (Enlightened), emerged among the Delaware villages near the Ohio River. His message—a return to traditional ways and a rejection of white man’s trade goods, especially rum—resonated widely among the Delaware and spread to other tribes. The Kickapoo, finding great sense in his teachings, became some of his most ardent supporters.
As newcomers to the Ohio Valley, the Delaware lacked the influence to lead a revolt. That role fell to Pontiac, a chief of the Detroit Ottawa, one of the most important members of the old French alliance.
Embracing Neolin’s teachings, Pontiac infused them with an anti-British sentiment and secretly began organizing a general uprising. When it erupted in May of 1763, Pontiac’s Rebellion captured nine of the twelve British forts west of the Appalachians.
Detroit, a crucial objective Pontiac took upon himself, managed to withstand the siege.
The End of Pontiac’s Rebellion
As the British held Forts Detroit, Niagara, and Pitt, the uprising began to crumble. In October, Pontiac was compelled to sign a truce with the British commander at Detroit and withdraw west into northern Indiana.
Throughout the winter, he sought ways to salvage the situation, but the British were already taking steps to address the grievances. The Proclamation of 1763 halted all new settlement west of the Appalachians, and Amherst was replaced in November by General Thomas Gage. William Johnson regained his influence, and Gage restored the supply of trade goods to their previous levels.
The following summer, British columns began to advance westward, and most of Pontiac’s allies began to desert him and make peace. Peace treaties were signed at Niagara, Presque Isle, Detroit, and Coshocton. The Kickapoo, however, remained an exception, forcing a British expedition dispatched to take the surrender of Fort de Chartres (Kaskaskia, Illinois) and the Illinois country to turn back.
By the fall of 1764, Pontiac’s only remaining allies, besides his own Ottawa, were the Kickapoo, Illinois, and the Mackinac Ojibwe. He refused to concede defeat and traveled to Fort de Chartres to request French assistance and supplies. Unfortunately, the garrison had already been evacuated, and the commander had nothing to offer him, urging him instead to make peace.
The Croghan Incident and Pontiac’s Death
In May of 1765, a second British expedition, commanded by George Croghan, was dispatched to take control of the Illinois country. It was attacked near the Wabash River by Kickapoo and Mascouten warriors. Croghan was captured alive, but three Shawnee chiefs in his escort were killed. The Kickapoo were embarrassed, not because a British official had been attacked, but because the deaths of the chiefs would likely lead to war with the Shawnee.
They took Croghan to Fort Ouiatenon (Lafayette, Indiana) and handed him over to the Miami. Still refusing to deal directly with the British, the Kickapoo asked the Miami to request the British to "cover the dead" for them with the Shawnee.
The British complied, averting a Shawnee-Kickapoo war. However, the Kickapoo remained aloof and continued to resist British authority until 1771. This incident also had another important outcome.
While at Ouiatenon, the Miami arranged a meeting between Croghan and Pontiac. Croghan convinced Pontiac to agree to a peace and accompany him to Detroit in October to sign a treaty.
That same month, Fort de Chartres surrendered to a British detachment commanded by Captain Thomas Sterling, and the Kickapoo officially became part of the British empire. After his failure to take Detroit and his subsequent capitulation, Pontiac’s reputation suffered. At an Ontario meeting in 1765, his own Ottawa warriors openly defied him. At the same meeting, Pontiac argued with and stabbed a Peoria chief.
He left Detroit soon after and moved west to northern Illinois near the Kickapoo. Resentment remained strong, and in April 1769, he was murdered by a Peoria warrior at Cahokia, Illinois.
The French buried him across the river at St. Louis. Rumors spread that his assassination was part of a British plot, and the Ojibwe chief from Mackinac arrived at Cahokia shortly afterward and killed two employees of the British trader. While British involvement remained unconfirmed, the role of the Illinois was clear. In death, Pontiac commanded more love within the old French alliance than he had in life.
The Illinois Confederation’s Demise
The Ojibwe, Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo, Mascouten, Ottawa, Winnebago, and Potawatomi united against the Illinois to avenge his death. The ensuing war nearly exterminated the Illinois. The Peoria retreated to their stronghold at Starved Rock, but were surrounded and starved to death during the siege.
Only 300 managed to escape to safety in the south at the French settlement of Kaskaskia. The victors then divided the lands of the defeated Illinois among themselves.
The Prairie Band of the Kickapoo moved into central Illinois near present-day Peoria and settled along the Sangamon River. The Vermilion Kickapoo settled to the southeast between the headwaters of the Vermilion and the mouth of the Wabash.
Conflict with the Osage and the Arrival of the Long Knives
Since 1724, the primary purpose of the alliance between the Prairie Kickapoo and the Fox and Sauk had been their war with the Osage west of the Mississippi. This conflict had intensified over the years, forcing the Osage to retreat south across northern Missouri beyond the Missouri River.
Still unfriendly with the British, the Kickapoo maintained their ties with French traders located west of the Mississippi in Spanish Missouri, Louisiana having been ceded to Spain in 1763. Competition between rival traders ensured that the Kickapoo and their allies remained well-armed, and neither the French, Spanish, nor British could halt the trade to stop the warfare.
In 1763, a group of Kickapoo moved across the Mississippi and established a village just north of St. Louis. Supported by their relatives in Illinois, the Kickapoo used this as a base to attack Osage villages in central Missouri.
During one raid in 1800, the Kickapoo destroyed a village of the Little Osage on the Missouri River, killing 50 of their warriors.
Meanwhile, the "Long Knives" had made their first appearance in the Ohio Valley. American frontiersmen, ignoring the Proclamation of 1763, came west. They were typically armed with large knives, hence the name given to them by the tribes of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley.
The Treaty of Fort Stanwix and Growing Tensions
Disregarding all authority, especially British, the Long Knives initially came to hunt but soon stayed. The British military could not keep them out. Facing the possibility of revolution, the British yielded to American demands to open more land for settlement. In 1768, William Johnson began negotiations with the Iroquois for the cession of the Ohio Valley.
The resulting Treaty of Fort Stanwix was an agreement in which the Iroquois sold the lands of the Ohio tribes (whom the Iroquois could not control) to the British to give to the Americans (whom the British could not control). The British then closed all their forts in the Ohio Valley except Detroit and Kaskaskia.
The Shawnee protested the treaty to the Iroquois, but they were ignored, except for a threat of annihilation if they opposed it. They took matters into their own hands and, in what proved to be the opening moves toward the formation of the Western Alliance, made overtures of alliance during 1769 to the Illinois, Wea, Piankashaw, Miami, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Wyandot, Ottawa, Ojibwe, Delaware, Mascouten, Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw.
Meetings were held at the Shawnee villages on Ohio’s Scioto River in 1770 and 1771, but William Johnson prevented an alliance by threatening war with the Iroquois. Both Virginia and Pennsylvania claimed the area near Pittsburgh where the initial settlement occurred.
Virginia also claimed Kentucky and negotiated treaties with the Cherokee to extinguish their title. In 1773, Virginia sent survey teams into Kentucky to prepare for settlement. While the Shawnee had tolerated settlement near Pittsburgh, they were determined to protect their hunting territory in Kentucky.
Clashes erupted between the survey crews and Shawnee. The following spring, Virginia frontiersmen massacred a group of peaceful Mingo at Yellow Creek (Steubenville, Ohio), and retaliation by the Mingo and Shawnee touched off Lord Dunmore’s (Cresap’s) War (1774).
With the Delaware remaining neutral, the Shawnee sent a war belt to the Detroit tribes, but it was refused when William Johnson once again threatened Iroquois intervention.
The same message was sent to the Wabash tribes (Kickapoo and Miami living along the lower Wabash River in Indiana), but the British "sweetened the pot" in this case by invalidating the claims of the Wabash Land Company to the lands between the Wabash and Illinois Rivers.
This left the Shawnee and Mingo alone against the Virginia militia brought west that summer by Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia. The Virginians burned several Shawnee villages and were gathering on the Ohio River for a second offensive when the Shawnee attacked them at Point Pleasant (West Virginia) that fall.
After a hard-fought battle, the Shawnee withdrew.
Afterward, they signed a treaty at Camp Charlotte, agreeing to remain north of the Ohio River. In the spring of 1775, Daniel Boone arrived in Kentucky with the first white settlers just as the first shots of the American Revolution were being fired in Massachusetts.
The American Revolution and George Rogers Clark
Americans are taught that the revolution was fought over "no taxation without representation," but the British would argue that it began on the western frontier when the "Long Knives" started moving into Ohio and Kentucky and began seizing native land.
With the onset of war, the British urged the Ohio tribes to attack American settlements. Unlike their situation in 1774, the Shawnee now had support from the Mingo, Detroit tribes, St. Joseph Potawatomi, Saginaw and Mackinac Ojibwe, and Chickamauga Cherokee. The Kickapoo and Miami, however, initially remained neutral.
The fighting west of the Appalachians was almost a separate war from the struggle in the east, devolving into a brutal exchange of raids between the Ohio tribes and Kentucky settlements.
George Rogers Clark, an Indian hater, fighter, and land speculator, played a prominent role in this conflict. His sentiments were evident when he stated, "for his part he would never spare man, woman, or child of them on whom he could lay his hands."
As both natives and "Long Knives" exchanged atrocities along the Ohio, Clark learned that the British had reduced their garrisons in the Illinois country. After informing Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia, he received secret orders in 1778 to take Illinois.
With the assistance of local French settlers, Clark and his small army of 175 frontiersmen captured Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes without firing a shot. He might have also taken Detroit had he not spurned offers of assistance from the Kickapoo, Kaskaskia (Illinois), and Piankashaw (Miami).
After taking Fort Sackville at Vincennes, Clark returned to Illinois. Colonel Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit (known as the "hair buyer" in Kentucky because he paid for American scalps), recaptured it in December with a force of French and Detroit warriors.
Clark made a daring mid-winter trek to Vincennes, and after a brief siege, Hamilton surrendered in February 1779. The British and French were spared, but Clark and his men killed the native prisoners without using bullets. This act of brutality turned the Kickapoo and other tribes in the area against the Americans.
Clark returned to Kentucky, where the war continued in full fury during 1780. By 1781, few tribes in the Ohio Valley remained neutral. Despite the allegiance of the French settlers to the Americans, by 1782, the Wabash tribes and Peoria had sided with the British.
Post-Revolutionary War and the Western Alliance
Due to Clark’s actions, the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War in 1783 granted the Ohio Valley to the Americans. The British urged their allies to cease fighting, but they continued to occupy Detroit and other forts in the region until the Americans paid the claims of British loyalists as required by the treaty.
The new United States was impoverished. To pay debts from the war, Congress sold land rights in Ohio to speculators. Settlers flooded across the Ohio River, often seizing native lands through squatting.
The prevailing sentiment on the frontier was that peace with the British did not extend to their native allies. George Rogers Clark offered to lead a war of conquest. Congress rewarded him with a large land grant in southern Indiana for past services but declined his offer to start a war.
The government attempted to resolve the issue through treaties: Fort Stanwix (1784 – Iroquois confirm cession of Ohio made in 1768), Fort McIntosh (1785 – Delaware and Wyandot), and Fort Finney (1786 – Shawnee). However, these agreements were meaningless.
Badly battered by the Americans during the war, the Iroquois no longer controlled Ohio. The Ohio chiefs who signed at McIntosh and Finney did not represent the real power in the region—the Western Alliance. Formed during a meeting at the Wyandot villages on the upper Sandusky (northwest Ohio) in 1783, the alliance aimed to fight for Ohio.
The British did not attend but, through the Mohawk Joseph Brant, made clear their intention to support the alliance against the Americans. The first council fire of the alliance was at the Shawnee village of Wakatomica, but in 1787, it was moved to Brownstown, a Wyandot village just south of Detroit.
Members included the Mingo, Wyandot, Miami, Kickapoo, Fox, Sauk, Mascouten, Delaware, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Chickamauga (Cherokee).
Little Turtle’s War and the Treaty of Fort Greenville (1790s)
By the spring of 1786, nearly 400 Americans resided in southern Indiana, scattered among the French near Vincennes on the lower Wabash. After escalating tensions and confrontations, a large war party of 400-700 Kickapoo and Miami arrived at Vincennes in July, announcing to the French that they had come to kill all the Americans.
The French stalled and eventually arranged a truce. The Kickapoo and Miami left, but the Americans fortified themselves under the leadership of Daniel Sullivan and sent south to Kentucky for assistance.
George Rogers Clark arrived in the fall with a relief force of Kentucky militia, half of whom promptly deserted when there was no immediate fight. Clark still managed to garrison Vincennes and dispatch a detachment to Kaskaskia to arrest a British trader and three Frenchmen as "Spanish agents."
Just as Clark was about to initiate a major war, the American military commander in the region, Josiah Harmar, ordered him to disband and return to Kentucky.
Meanwhile, raids against Kentucky settlements had resumed during 1786 due to continued American encroachment and dissatisfaction with the agreements signed at Forts McIntosh and Finney.
Meeting at Brownstown in November, the alliance council established the Ohio River as the frontier and declared a truce until the following spring to allow their demand to reach Congress.
Unfortunately, the message did not reach Philadelphia until July, and by that time, fighting had resumed. After a summer of raids, Benjamin Logan’s Kentuckians invaded Ohio and attacked the Shawnee.
In December, the Americans made a final attempt to settle the dispute through treaty and called for a meeting at Fort Harmar at the falls of Ohio’s Muskingum River.
The alliance agreed to attend but was deeply divided. A war party of 300 Kickapoo warriors attacked an army convoy near the mouth of the Wabash, inflicting heavy casualties.
In Ohio, soldiers constructing a council house for the treaty meeting were attacked in July. When the Treaty of Fort Harmar was finally signed in January 1789, it placed the boundary on the Muskingum.
The agreement was worthless. It did not represent the consensus of the alliance nor the desires of the frontiersmen, who would not be satisfied until they possessed the entire Ohio Valley.
Encroachment continued, and raids resumed south of the Ohio. That summer, Patrick Brown’s Kentucky militia retaliated by attacking the Kickapoo and Miami villages along the lower Wabash.
The fighting spread to the Illinois country when the Kickapoo and Piankashaw moved west to the vicinity of Kaskaskia and began raiding American settlements in the area. With the renewal of warfare, the militant Miami and Shawnee began to dominate the alliance meetings.
The Kickapoo, Wea, and Piankashaw supported this and deferred to the leadership of the Miami war chief Little Turtle. At this point, the Americans decided to use force. At the beginning of Little Turtle’s War (1790-94), Major John Hamtramck attacked the Wabash villages, but Josiah Harmar’s army was soundly defeated (200 casualties) by Little Turtle and the alliance in October 1790.
The following year, Little Turtle led the alliance to its greatest victory when they nearly annihilated Arthur St. Clair’s expedition in western Ohio—the greatest Native American victory over an American army (600 killed, 400 wounded).
Despite this, two positive developments occurred for the Americans in 1791: George Washington sent Anthony "Mad Anthony" Wayne to take command in Ohio, and during General Charles Scott’s offensive against the Miami and Kickapoo villages along the Wabash, Colonel John Hardin captured 52 of their women and children.
Anxious for the return of their women and children held prisoner in Kentucky, the Wabash tribes made peace in 1792 and withdrew from the alliance. While Wayne trained his Legion (regulars to support the skittish frontier militia), he built a line of forts aimed directly at the alliance villages in northwest Ohio.
Two American peace overtures made at the same time further divided the alliance. Wayne began his
