Native American Power in the United States, 1783-1795

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2004 by McClinton, Rowena

Native American Power in the United States, 1783-1795. By Celia Barnes. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003. Pp. 250. Index. Cloth, $47.50).

This book encompasses the twelve-year period of time when, the newly formed United States government went from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution of the United States of America. British historian Celia Barnes argues that these years were particularly precarious and pivotal ones for the newly-fashioned nation because Indians, with their allies the British and Spanish, wielded considerable leverage and power. Into this abyss of international geo-political arenas, Barnes re-examines how Indians influenced momentous decisions through "play-off" diplomacy between these two international powers and the American nation. She contends that what resulted was a Native American influential intensity in creating and building the United States. Throughout the years between 1783 and 1795, the parties involved fomented climates of both war and peace. The chronology highlights the firestorms permeating the relationships the Indian nations held with Americans and Europeans.

The first chapter, "A Collusion of Cultures," takes the reader into the longstanding myriad world of cultural intermingling and conflict. She maintains that Native Peoples had their own agenda and it was to preserve their ancestral holdings against an avalanche of backcountry settlers. However, both Indian and white hostilities forced violence. In this chapter, Barnes delineates how Indians accepted diversity within their ranks and why this characteristic put them at odds with Anglo Americans who viewed this trait an anathema to success. Furthermore, Barnes agrees with Native American scholar Richard White's notion that whites even refused to accept Indian spirituality because the Indian "god" was not real to them: Indians were more than likely able to make Christ into Manitou than whites could make Manitou into Christ. Yet with these differences, she addresses White's theory of "middle ground" that reinforces a highly interactive landscape of trade and commerce.

In Chapter Two, Barnes uses terms and concepts that lack meaning from the Indian viewpoint, the mindset she seems to want to bring to the fore. The terms, "savage," "militant warrior," and "frontier" become problematic in "In Pursuit of Land and Liberty." While settlers certainly pursued ways to express freedom at the end of the American Revolutionary War (1783) and did so by grabbing western lands, Indians did not perceive "frontier" and land in a linear way in the European sense. Likewise, whites "grabbing up" Indian land did not mean they took "unspoilt land," since all land was obviously Indian and in use by Indians in the Indian manner.

In Chapters Three and Four, "The British Connection" and "The Spanish Connection," Barnes argues that, though the Americans had won the Revolutionary War, Spain and England remained in what became the conterminous United States. Consequently, she argues that they wielded considerable influence with Indian groups and that resulting power assisted in provoking the stability of the new nation. The American government itself could not conciliate both Indians and expanding white setters. Furthermore, she postulates that the union was so weak it failed to create boundaries. So Britain and Spain had access to Indian groups and lent expertise in aiding Indian confederations and alliances.

In Chapters Five and Six, "Indian Victory in the Northwest" and "The Southwest Frontier," Barnes emphasizes that the new government was still so frail that Indian pockets of resistance flourished. She contends that the American government found itself marginalized to such a degree that Indians became power brokers. For example, Mohawk Joseph Brant spearheaded a move for moderation with whites and come to peaceful terms with his white neighbors. Again, the argument appears to reinforce the concept that American political and economic weaknesses allowed Indians to coalesce, strive for Indian unity, and attain temporary peaceful co-existence.

In the subsequent chapters, "The Collapse of Indian Resistance in the Northwest" and "Conclusion," the author posits that the backwoodsman mentality of conquering and grabbing prevailed over harmony and accommodation with Indians. Again, she contends that the American government had lost its ability to impose a national Indian policy.

This book will appeal to a general audience, but not necessarily a scholarly one. The book fails to offer any fresh analysis of this era. Reginald Horsman's Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783-1812 (1992) imparts the most definitive study of this same period. American policy toward Indians constantly shifted from the Early Republic's attempts to reconcile the Revolutionary Spirit of 1776 with how to curb land hungry whites. At the same time, foreign powers, though present in North America, failed to exert lasting trade and commercial ties with Indian nations: they lacked both people and affordable consumable trade items. Barnes's contention that the backwoodsman's conquering spirit exacerbated Native American attempts to re-conquer Native ancestral lands reinforces what we already know. The newly formed government looked the other way while treaty agreements were broken and atrocities were committed.