The Bonds of Empire

1. The Bonds of Empire

2. Portfolio • There will be three sections of a portfolio due during the semester. This portfolio will be based on written answers based of the questions from Kierner, Revolutionary American • Portfolio I due Thursday February 18th • Portfolio II due Thursday April 1st • Portfolio III due Day of Final (acts as final)

3. Each Week Students will read the assigned chapter and sources from Kierner • After reading the chapter you will answer the questions relating to four (4) of the sources for that chapter • Your answers must be typed • Staple together each chapter to hand the complete set in at each due date

4. Portfolio

5. Land People and economy • US at independence vast by Euro standards • 867,980 square miles • 1500 miles from Canadian border to disputed border with Florida • up to 1200 miles west towards Mississippi River

6. Until Louisiana Purchase (1803) almost all white settlement east of Appalachian mountains • By 1770 no more than 20,800,000 acres of land improved • 32,499 Square miles • 8% of present seaboard states • plus Vermont and West Virginia

7. Divided in to three board regions • North New England Colonies: • New Hampshire • Massachusetts • Rhode Island • Connecticut • Vermont and Maine not separate at time of revolution • Middle or Mid-Atlantic colonies: • New York • New Jersey • Pennsylvania

8. South: • Upper South: • Maryland • Virginia • Parts of North Carolina • Lower South: • Rest of North Carolina • South Carolina • Georgia

9. Both the lower and upper south were larger than the other regions geographically • South Carolina “in the spring a paradise, in the summer a hell. And in the autumn a hospital” • Joseph Davis Schoepf

10. fourth region – west of Appalachians –largely controlled by Native Americans • huge territory offered a diverse and attractive physical environment

11. Native America Indian America by 1775 was a cultural cacophony, a country of mixed and mixing peoples.

12. By the end of the colonial period • Indians of the eastern woodlands numbered perhaps 150,000

13. During 18th C Indian people were being engulfed by an ocean of European and African people. • Population of British North America doubled every twenty-five years • 400 percent between 1700 and 1750

14. Change had always occurred • Native American communities adapted the landscape in which they lived • But the colonists intensified the pace of change

15. Charles Woodmason, an itinerant preacher noted that • by the 1760s the Carolina backcountry had begun to ‘wear a new face” • Europeans added not only new animals and ideas but also disease • Smallpox, plague, measles, influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, diphtheria yellow fevers and a host of new diseases took hold in Indian America

16. The impact of trade

17. Most Indian communities were economically dependent upon Europeans to some degree by 1775. • Dependency rendered Indian people vulnerable to abuse • Choctaws at the Mobile Congress in the winter of 1771-2 complained graphically that traders shortchanged them so often that: • the flaps of cloth provided as loin cloths “don’t cover our secret parts, and we are in danger of being deprived of our manhood by every hungry dog that approaches.”

18. The fur and deerskin trades • introduced new commodities to Indian America • they also introduced alien systems of value and meaning. • Economic incentives undermined old spiritual relationships   • shrinking animal populations • consumption outstripped production and Indians who had become commercial hunters often became debtor-hunters.

19. European agents and traders cultivated client chiefs giving medals and gifts to buy and bolster their support.

20. Violence, alcohol, and religion

21. The natives new world was one of unprecedented violence. • random individual violence • Inter tribal warfare reached new levels of intensity. • Indians fought each other for access to European guns • Then turned the guns on their enemies with deadly effect

22. Indian Leaders struggled to maintain peace • Knowing alternative to coexistence was a bloodbath. • Indians also found it difficult to avoid becoming involved in the wars for empire waged in North America.

23. Alcohol, known as “deadly medicine,” also deafened young men to the wisdom of their elders

24. Leaders lamented their inability to control their young warriors in this new world of chaos and opportunity • Traditional medicine appeared, at times, to be failing

25. Missionaries from different countries and denominations entered Indian county to compete for a harvest of Indian souls. Leading to social revolution and factionalization in Indian communities. • All this tells us that • Challenges to traditional authority and declining political deference were not unique to colonial white society in the years before the Revolution.

26. Although The colonial era was a period of drastic change for Americas' native people

27. Everywhere, there was continuity in the midst of change. • Indians who donned European clothes often retained traditional hairstyles, slit ears, and facial tattoos.

28. New trade goods were fashioned into traditional motifs • Traditional lithic and ceramic technologies declined, • but basket making and wood carving survived and were stimulated by European demand.

29. People still found guidance in • dreams and believed in the efficacy of spirits, ceremonies and omens • Ancient rituals continued to renew the world and maintain harmony • participation in rituals helped define community identity in a world where so much else was in flux. • Old ways made strong crutches as people ventured down new paths. 

30. Exchange, transformations and dependency operated along two-way streets. • As Indian people traded for European clothes, guns, and alcohol • Europeans adopted Indian-style clothing, canoes’ and foods. • As Indian people adopted domesticated livestock, • European colonists adopted Native American corn culture and hunting practices.  

31. Indian people • traveled to colonial capitals as ambassadors • attended colonial colleges as students • walked the streets of Colonial towns as visitors • came to settlements as peddlers • and they worked as slaves, servants, interpreters, guides, laborers, carpenters, whalers, and sailors.

32. Indian and colonial economies affected each other and became interdependent. • European traders needed Indian hunters and customers • European and colonial armies needed Indian scouts and allies, and in time, adopted Indian methods of waging war

33. But for a European to step too far was worrisome • ”White Indians” often aroused fear and contempt in colonial society • Yet, they often found a place in Indian country and exercised considerable influence as culture brokers

34. Finally, land, of course, was the main source of contention between Indian people and their new neighbors. Some colonial governments passed laws to protect Indian lands Others used deeds to legitimize the acquisition of Indian lands by trickery coercion, and corruption What Historian Francis Jennings referred to as “the deed game.”

35. The mixing of peoples and cultures did not erase differences or eradicate conflict. • The goal of a colonist “was not to become Indian nor did their selective and piecemeal adaptations of native techniques and technology make them so” • And Indians who borrowed from European culture did not intend to, nor did they, become Europeans

36. In fact, conflict between Indian and European cultures was increasing steadily by the eve of the Revolution • Proximity and interconnectedness of Indian and colonial communities • Gave the backcountry warfare of the Revolution a face-to-face nature that heightened its bitterness.

37. A moment of humor

38. Native Americans and the seven years war French and Indian war in America

39. First half of 18thc interior nations • Creek • Cherokee • Iroquois • Maintained political and military strength through a policy of aggressive neutrality

40. aggressive neutrality • Native nations sat between competing European colonies • By alternatively offering support, threatening attack, and trading • Interior Native Indian nations had maintained a position of power in their interaction with Europeans • But, this position was under attack

41. The later 18thc saw a huge population increase • 1700 250,000 • 1750 1.2 million • 400,000 in the next decade • ¾ of this number entered through • Baltimore • Philadelphia • New York • People moving into the Ohio back country

43. In 1752, the Marquis Duquesne was made governor-general of New France • specific instructions to take possession of the Ohio Valley, removing all British presence from the area. • At the same time, Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, was granting land in the Ohio Valley to citizens of his colony

44. All this movement threw the area into chaos • The French continued to claim the area • Invading British settlers and traders began asserting control • Both ignored any sense of Indian ownership • Eventually the battle for this region, and of America itself, was tied into broader European conflicts and war was declared

45. Initially French were able to push back the British • British generals angered Colonial Governments by demanding and ordering action and volunteers • Changed when William Pitt became British Secretary of State • Offered to work with Colonial Governments and pay for war costs • By 1758 Louisburg and Fort Frontenac fell to the British

46. Native American Help • Initially Native Americans side with French • After British victories in 1758 they rethink this strategy • Leads to Treaty of Easton • Signed in October 1758 in Easton, Pennsylvania between the British colonial government and the Native American tribes in the Ohio Country • specified that • Native Americans would not fight with the French against the British • The British in Pennsylvania would not establish any settlements west of the Allegheny Mountains after the conclusion of the war.

47. 1759-60 Fort Niagara fell, then Quebec, then Montreal • Jeffery Amherst was British General and became leading figure dealing with Native Americans • Amherst’s policy to Native Americans led to a deterioration in relations • War was officially ended in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris

48. Treaty of Paris involved a complex series of land exchanges • France's cession to Spain of Louisiana • Great Britain gained the rest of New France except for the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon • With the handover of New France Britain gained control of all lands in North America east of the Mississippi River with the exception of New Orleans.

49. Colonists think that this was the green light to expand westward into the disputed Ohio country • Britain worried about controlling such a vast area and fearful of both Native American attacks and attempts by France to regain lost land put into place the Proclamation act of 1763 • And the proclamation line which stopped Westward expansion • To little to late?

50. The Proclamation Act of 1763 • In effect created a Native American reserve west of the Allegheny divide • Forbade settlement west of the proclamation line • Required removal of settlers already there • Act required the licensing of Native American traders • Forbade private purchase of land from the Native Americans