From the moment the United States organized a federal government via the Second Continental Congress (1775), that government had been involved in Indian affairs.  On June 10, 1775, Congress appointed a committee “to report what steps . . . are necessary to be taken for securing and preserving the friendship of the Indian Nations”.  There were at the time about 200,000 Indians living east of the Mississippi River and south of Canada (see map below for approximate locations of nations).  They were outnumbered by 2.5 million white and black people along the seaboard.  But, they still controlled a huge arc of territory from upstate New York to the Mississippi valley to Florida, and their allegiance would be a major accession to either side in the white man’s war.

The thirteen states, however, were not willing to cede all power over Indian relations to their new federal government.  Voters in the states wanted Indian land—for themselves, for their children, and as an investment—and they wanted to be free to grab it by conquest, by private purchase, by squatting, or however their state might determine.  During the colonial period, the British Crown had often frustrated such attempts, reserving to itself the right to manage Indian land cessions and trade.  The states were not willing to risk seeing the federal government assume that role.

The authors of the Articles of Confederation (1777) thus struck a compromise, granting Congress power of war and peace (which presumably would apply to Indian as well as European nations), and power of “regulating the trade and managing all (Indian) affairs”, but only with “the Indians not members of any of the states”.  This satisfied by way of ambiguity.  What did it mean for an Indian to be a member of a state?  Did living on land claimed by a state suffice?  States at that time claimed every acre of the United States.  Or did an Indian need to settle permanently in a town near white settlement to be a member of a state?  This remained to be determined.

As it turned out, neither the federal government nor the states had much success in "securing and preserving the friendship" of Indians during the Revolutionary War.  Some individuals and some factions within some tribes did fight on the American side.  But the British had a longer history of Indian relationships, more money, better trade goods, and less lust for native land.  The majority of almost every native American nation sided with the British during the war.

The Americans, of course, won anyway.  Indian opposition had been an inconvenience during the war, but from the American point of view, it simplified matters, and eased consciences, in dealing with Indian nations after the peace.  The British, after all, had lost the war and had been forced (by treaty) to evacuate the United States.  Did not their Indian allies deserve the same treatment?  From the Congressional point of view, in fact, policy toward the Indians would be more benign than toward the British.  The Indians would not be forced to leave the United States entirely.  They would, however, be required to cede most of their land without compensation, and be confined to small parcels they would retain on sufferance.

The only remaining question, on the American side, was to whom the Indians would cede their land—the federal government, or the states?  The states asserted that any Indian living on any land claimed by a state was a “member of a state”, and took Indian affairs into their own hands.  Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, New York, and Pennsylvania all forced Indian land cessions during or shortly after the Revolutionary War, in defiance of Article VI of the Articles of Confederation which forbade states from entering into treaties with any “king, prince, or state”.  (Or were these mere “real estate transactions”?)  South of the Ohio River, where the states aggressively asserted land claims, Congress could do little more than confirm settlements the states had already reached, which it did via three Treaties of Hopewell signed with the Cherokee, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, in 1785-86.

Matters were different north of the Ohio.  Virginia and New York had ceded their claim to this region by March 1784 (see Creating the Public Domain).  Congress asserted exclusive federal control over the Northwest.  The Indians living in the Northwest would clearly and unambiguously be “not members of any of the states”, and subject to Congressional jurisdiction.  Congress dispatched commissioners Wolcott, Butler, and Lee to the northern Indians in October 1784, to secure their surrender.

The commissioners dictated three treaties to the Iroquois (Fort Stanwix, 1784), Delaware (Fort McIntosh, 1785) and Shawnee (Fort Finney, 1786).  The Iroquois abandoned all claims in the Ohio country (to the left of the red line in the map at left).  The Delawares and Shawnees were allowed to retain, for the time being, the areas shown in the map.  They signed away everything else.  The Indians received nothing in return for what they gave up except peace, and hospitality and minor gifts for those individuals who attended the conferences and signed the treaties.

Congress never debated or ratified these treaties, apparently not considering it necessary to do so.

The treaties failed of their purpose.  The Shawnees and their allies in the west (Miami, Kickapoo, Wabash, and others) did not feel themselves a defeated nation, and regarded their kinsmen who had signed the worthless American treaties as craven sellouts.  Shawnee war parties began attacking any white settlers they found on the north bank of the Ohio River, and raided south into Kentucky as well.  The United States had only a small, newly formed army of about 700 men under Lieutenant Colonel Josiah Harmar (see The Reanimation of the United States Army) with which to respond.  Harmar judged his force insufficient, and called on the Virginia state militia for assistance.  Kentucky militiamen (Kentucky being part of Virginia) crossed the Ohio (1786) and counter-attacked and destroyed Indian towns, killing many.  Then the militia returned home, having achieved little other than to escalate the bitterness on both sides.

A confederation of western Indians ranging from Cherokee to Iroquois met under British protection in Detroit (see foreign policy problems) and petitioned Congress, demanding to bargain with Congress as a unit: “All treaties carried on with the United States, on our parts, should be with the general voice of the whole confederacy; and carried out in the most open manner, without any restraint on either side.”  The “partial treaties” dictated to individual tribes in 1784-85 were “void and of no effect”.

The protest was not without result.  Secretary of War Henry Knox bowed to the inevitable.  The Indians, he reported to Congress on October 27, 1787, had expressed the “highest disgust” at the principle of conquest.  “(T)he practice of the British government, and most of the Northern colonies previously to the late war, of purchasing the right of the soil of the Indians, and receiving a deed of sale and conveyance of the same, is the only mode of alienating their lands, to which they will peaceably accede.”  The United States must buy land instead of just taking it.  Knox asked for an appropriation of $40,000.  Congress appropriated $14,000.  At the same time, Congress was selling a small fraction of the formerly Indian land for one million dollars (see Creating the Public Domain).

Arthur St. Clair, the newly appointed Governor of the Northwest Territory, went through the motions of summoning another council of Indians (December, 1788) at Fort Harmar near Marietta, Ohio.  Nearby, white settlers were already pouring in and establishing farms.  Once again, Indian attendance was sparse and unrepresentative.  St. Clair proposed separate treaties with the Iroquois and western Indians, noting “the jealousy that subsisted between them, which I was not willing to lessen by appearing to consider them as one people”.  St. Clair didn’t even offer the entire appropriation of $14,000.  He offered the Iroquois $3,000 and the western Indians $6,000.  Once again, those Indians who were present favored peace at any price and signed.

Once again, the treaties solved nothing.  The Articles of Confederation gave way to the Constitution of the United States (COTUS).  The Indian problem became George Washington’s problem.  Washington sent Harmar to clear the Indians out of the Ohio country by force.  The Shawnee and Miami annihilated Harmar’s small army.  Finally Congress—backed now by federal tax money—raised a larger, more permanent, and more professional force under General Anthony Wayne, and Wayne in turn annihilated the Indian confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794).  Ohio was thereafter secure for white settlement.

The Confederation government had set the template for Indian relations for the next century.  The principle of ownership by conquest was dead.  The federal government would acknowledge Indian title to land, and would gain it by purchase.  But, the purchase would invariably be one-sided.  The government would offer a laughably inadequate amount of money on a “take it or leave it” basis.  Factions and individuals within a tribe would be induced to accept the money by threats and gifts.  The resulting treaty would be held up as binding on the entire tribe, and when opposing factions inevitably resisted, they would be crushed with overwhelming force.

Sources: Nevill Craig, editor, The Olden Times: A Monthly Publication Devoted to the Preservation of Documents and Other Authentic Information in Relation to the Early Explorations and the Settlement and Improvement of the Country Around the Head of the Ohio, Volume II, 1848; William Hogeland, Autumn of the Black Snake: The Creation of the U.S. Army and the Invasion that Opened the West, 2017; James H. O’Donnell, Southern Indians in the American Revolution, 1973; Wiley Sword, President Washington’s Indian War, 1985; Journals of the Continental Congress, Volumes 27, 32, 33, and 34