When the American Revolution began in 1775, it was not just the start of a war for freedom, it was also the beginning of a massive land rush across the Appalachian Mountains. Long barred from establishing significant settlements by the British, thousands of Americans rushed westward into what is today West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee to build farms, trading posts, forts, and even towns. Despite years of harsh conflict with the natives living and claiming these territories, by the end of the war some 25,000 Americans had settled west of the Appalachians, many setting up independent governments to provide services and to see to the common defense. The end of the American Revolution did little to mitigate the flow of settlers westward, and conflicting claims to these westward territories amongst the states threatened to further create chaos. As a result, beginning in 1784, the federal government stepped in to try and hammer out agreements with the various native nations to re-establish peace along the frontier.
The combination of all out war and smallpox over the past decade had devastated most of the native nations along the frontier, and the Treaty of Paris and its handing over of western territories by the British had left many native leaders feeling abandoned. Facing increasing encroachment by American settlers, many felt their best option was to make concessions to establish peace. However, there were also many who felt it was best to continue resisting, which was possible thanks to guns being provided from British forts along the Great Lakes and Spanish trading posts along the Mississippi River. Both the British and Spanish saw it in their best interest to destabilize the newly formed American frontier via a long-term native guerilla conflict, with the Spanish taking the further step of barring American trade along the Mississippi, cutting off the quickest and cheapest trade route for the American settlers, and opening Florida and Louisiana to American settlement if they swore an oath of loyalty to the Spanish Empire. As a result, some American settlers in Tennessee began secretly negotiating the possibility of seceding to join New Spain, to both reopen trade and gain better protection from native attacks, though said negotiations ultimately never succeeded.
The first group to sign a treaty with the American government was the remains of the Iroquois Confederacy in 1784, which signed away all its claims to the Ohio Country. This was the first of many controversial land sales, which would result in the dissolution of the once mighty Iroquois Confederacy by the end of the century, its members either fleeing into Canada or absorbed into American culture and society. This was followed by the Lenape signing away many of their claims in 1785 and moving westward. The following year, treaties were signed with the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Chickamauga in the southeast, establishing recognized territories and promising the protection of the American government. However, with little to no standing army, such treaties were impossible to enforce, and American settlers soon after began squatting on agreed to native lands, which swayed support more towards those native leaders calling for greater resistance.
Significant violence first broke out in the southeast, with the war preferring factions of the Cherokee and other smaller nations launching widescale raids across the southeast frontier in the spring of 1786. However, these raids were met by a largescale counterattack by multiple settler and state militias, forcing the Cherokee and their allies to retreat westward. Though peace was established attacks continued, and not once for the next decade did any part of the southeast frontier know peace for long. However, though the Cherokee won some victories, they were Pyrrhic in nature, with the Cherokee pushed further to the south and west as time went on, their settlements burned to the ground.
Unlike the Cherokee, the native nations of the northwestern frontier were much more successful in their resistance. With many of the native people’s having allied and fought with each other before in the French and Indian War, Pontiac’s War, and the American Revolution, they were much more open to working together, and as early as 1784 many of the more militant members of these nations across the Ohio Country and Illinois Country had united under what became known as the United Indian Nations, or Northwestern Confederacy. Supported by the British, who wished to see the creation of a native buffer state, by 1786 they were actively resisting further encroachment via raiding settlements and torturing settlers. With little support from the states, the settler militias counterattacked, resulting in the Shawnee being pushed westward, but otherwise the natives held the line at the Ohio River, forcing a stalemate and increasingly violent guerilla warfare. Horrified by the growing conflict, in 1787 the states surrendered their claims to the native held territory to the federal government, which established the Northwest Territory, though it realistically had no real control over the area.
