American Indian Policy in the Old Northwest, 1783-1812

Bibliographic Data

ID3334410
AuthorsReginald Horsman (corresponding author)
Year1961
Volume18
Issue1
Pages35
Publication date1961-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1922806
OpenAlexW2329147402
LanguageEN
Citations received6

I N the years from I783 to i8I2 the one consistent element in American Indian policy in the Old Northwest was the desire to acquire the land between the Ohio and the Mississippi. The host of subsidiary objectives were all subordinated to this end. In theory, its attainment was simply a matter of telling the Indian inhabitants of the region that England had ceded it to the United States in I783 and that the Indians could live only on lands allotted to them by the American government. In practice, it soon became apparent that the Indians were not prepared to acknowledge the English right to give away Indian land, and the Americans were obliged to obtain their objective in other ways. Between I783 and I8I2 the American government developed a policy that would secure land in the simplest and least expensive manner. Not only did it thus secure land, it also succeeded in convincing itself that what it was doing was in the best interests of the Indians. What had started out in I783 as naked desire for land had, by i8I2, been transmuted into lofty moral purpose. By I8I2 American leaders were not only trying to convince others, but apparently had also convinced themselves that they were working for the ultimate benefit of the Indian. The manner in which national interest and moral purpose became entangled is a key to the history of nineteenthcentury expansion. The first phase of post-Revolutionary American Indian policy in the Old Northwest lasted from I783 to I787. In the Treaty of Paris which ended the Revolution the British ignored their Indian allies. The Indians were left to make their own peace with the Americans, and their position was complicated by the fact that the Americans desired more than the cessation of hostilities in the Northwest. American frontiersmen had long since pushed into western Pennsylvania and down the Ohio to Kentucky. They were now anxious to settle the rich lands northwest of the Ohio

Geography · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American Environmental and Regional History · Archaeology and Natural History

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