Indian Wars of the United States: From the Discovery Until 1862: Back When The West Was Wild, #4

By Nick Vulich

The early settlement of North America is the stuff legends are made of—John Smith, Myles Standish, and Pocahontas, to name a few. Learning about them is required reading from kindergarten on up.

Everyone knows the Pilgrims wouldn't have survived their first year at Plymouth Colony without help from the Native Americans. Squanto, an English-speaking member of the Patuxent tribe, taught them to plant corn and other crops and trap beaver. But, even with Squanto's help, over half the colonists died from the hardships they suffered that first winter. Cooperation among the natives and colonists continued for nearly a decade.

And then, just as suddenly, war with the neighboring tribes appeared imminent. As the number of colonists and their demands for land increased, so did the troubles between them.

Many Native American chiefs, beginning with King Philip, devised plans to drive the white settlers back to Europe or the Atlantic coast at the very least. None of them succeeded. This is their story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Vulich
• Release date: Apr 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215461464

Book preview

Indian Wars

of the United States

From the Discovery Until 1862

Copyright © 2022 Nick Vulich

A person with a beard Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Table of Contents

Introduction

Pequot War

King Philip’s War

Pontiac’s Conspiracy

Tecumseh and the Prophet

Black Hawk War

Keokuk, The Watchful Fox

Little Crow’s War

Footnotes

Introduction

The early settlement of North America is the stuff legends are made of—John Smith, Myles Standish, and Pocahontas, to name a few. Learning about them is required reading from kindergarten on up.

Everyone knows the Pilgrims wouldn’t have survived their first year at Plymouth Colony without help from the Native Americans. Squanto, an English-speaking member of the Patuxent tribe, taught them to plant corn and other crops and trap beaver. But, even with Squanto’s help, over half the colonists died from the hardships they suffered that first winter. Cooperation among the natives and colonists continued for nearly a decade.

And then, just as suddenly, war with the neighboring tribes appeared imminent. As the number of colonists and their demands for land increased, so did the troubles between them.

Many Native American chiefs, beginning with King Philip, devised plans to drive the white settlers back to Europe or the Atlantic coast at the very least. King Philip’s War took the lives of nearly 1,500 settlers and twice as many Native Americans in 1675.

Pontiac, an Ottawa chieftain, formed a loose-knit confederacy among the tribes in the early 1760s. And for a time, it looked like he might succeed in pushing the whites back beyond the Alleghanies. Within weeks, all but three of the eleven British forts that stretched across the Alleghany Mountains fell. Only Forts Pitt, Detroit, and Niagara survived.

Fort Pitt was the strongest garrison in the chain of forts. It had stone bastions facing every angle of attack and sixteen cannons to defend it. Traditional Native American tactics could not take the fort. If the tribes wanted to capture Fort Pitt, subterfuge or a siege were the only options. Fortunately, the commander did not succumb to the Indian’s tricks. If Fort Pitt had fallen, the native tribes could have easily pushed the whites back beyond the Alleghanies.

Forty years after Pontiac’s failed confederacy, two new leaders emerged among the Shawnee—Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa.

Tecumseh’s Indian confederacy got off to a bumpy start. Delegations from many tribes came to investigate but left just as quickly. The area around Greenville could not support so many people. The prophet promised his followers that food would be plentiful. Instead, they starved or were forced to beg for food from the soldiers at Vincennes.

The pan-Indian movement might have disappeared on its own—then and there—if William Henry Harrison hadn’t engineered the Fort Wayne Treaty in September of 1809. It gave Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa the ammunition they needed to grow their confederacy.

William Henry Harrison grew paranoid and saw Indians at every turn. Every day brought new rumors that Tecumseh’s followers planned to rise and kill the residents of Vincennes. And even when the evidence didn’t support an Indian attack, Harrison planned for it. For example, when Tenskwatawa’s followers stole a few horses, he used that as a reason to attack Prophetstown. After that, Tecumseh pledged himself to the British.

Black Hawk had no illusions about destroying the whites or pushing them back across the mountains. He wanted to live peacefully in his ancestral village along the Rock River. Some drunken Sac tribesmen signed a treaty with William Henry Harrison at St. Louis in 1804. It gave away the Sac village but allowed the tribesmen to stay there until the white settlers came. Thirty years later, it was time to pay the piper.

As early as 1823, squatters had moved into the Sac villages during their winter hunts. Eight years later, Illinois Governor John Reynolds called out the militia and forced Black Hawk to leave his village and withdraw across the border. When the Sacs crossed back into Illinois the following year, all hell busted loose in the Illinois country. When it was over, nearly half of Black Hawk’s followers died fighting a war they didn’t want.

Little Crow’s War was a war of opportunity brought on by the Civil War. The Sioux heard all sorts of rumors. Rumors that the North was losing. Rumors that the government had run out of money to pay them. And that made them think that now might be a good time to turn things around and get their lands back.

But even more than that, a lot of it came down to attitude. Many of the whites always seemed to say by their manner when they saw an Indian, ‘I am better than you,’ and the Indians did not like this, said Chief Big Eagle. The warriors were tired of being told what to do and treated as second-class citizens.

Little Crow and his chiefs knew fighting the Americans made no sense. But they also understood the young warriors wanted to fight and would likely fight, with or without them.

Perhaps, Little Crow decided—today is not such a bad day to die. His chiefs saw it that way, too. They understood they could not win a war against the whites, but they knew just as well that the whites would punish them all for the foolish actions of four young braves.

If that was the case, why not go out fighting?

Pequot War

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The early 17th century was a time of great flux among the Native Americans on the New England Coast. The Dutch and English had made inroads into their lands, and diseases had taken a devastating toll on the tribes.

Dutch exploration along America’s east coast started in 1609 after Henry Hudson sailed up New York Bay. Over the next five years, Dutch traders penetrated the wilderness surrounding the Connecticut River, establishing trading relationships with the native tribes.

A smallpox epidemic in 1619 wiped out as much as 90 percent of the native population along the east coast. The Pequots were fortunate to escape that outbreak. However, they weren’t as lucky in the outbreak of 1633-34. The population of the tribe got chopped in half, falling from 8,000 to somewhere around 4,000.

The death of Pequot sachem Wapigwooit in 1631 further splintered the tribe. Uncas and his band of Mohegans split off from the Pequots, allying themselves with the English. At the same time, Sassacus retained control of the remainder of the tribe, maintaining its alliance with the Dutch.

Besides, contact between the two civilizations was never easy. The Pequots had bad experiences with the English going back to 1614 when adventurer Thomas Hunt took twenty-seven members of the tribe captive. First, he lured them on board his ship, pretending to trade with them. Then, he locked them in the ship’s hold and sold the men into slavery in Malaga for twenty pounds a man.[1]

The Pequots quickly learned the value of European trade goods, especially the copper kettles and metal utensils they cut up to make arrowheads. The stronger materials gave them a technological advantage, allowing them to subdue neighboring tribes more easily.

Unfortunately, the stranglehold on trade helped and hurt the Pequot. It enriched the tribe and helped build its power base. But, at the same time, it created bitter enmities with the other tribes that would come back to haunt them when they needed their help the most.

How the War Began

The war itself started gradually.

In 1634, a Dutch trader lured Tatobem, a Niantic sachem, aboard his vessel under the pretense he wanted to trade. Instead, they held him captive, demanding a ransom for his safe return. The tribe quickly paid up, but the Dutch killed him anyway.

The Niantic retaliated, murdering an English trader named John Stone and seven crew members. When questioned, the Pequots claimed the attack was payback for the Dutch killing their sachem. They explained that they didn’t know the difference between Dutch and English, but the colonists didn’t believe them. After much debate, Sassacus sent the colony some wampum to atone for Stone’s death but refused to turn over his killers. He also allowed the English to settle on some of the tribe's Connecticut lands.

That should have ended the matter because Stone was persona non grata among the English. They had banished him from Boston for some shady dealings he had there.

Unfortunately, other factors came into play at about that same time. Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colony had begun expanding into the Connecticut River Valley, challenging the Dutch traders. In addition, a destructive hurricane the following year threatened the food supplies of the English and Native Americans.

Then in 1636, trader John Oldham and several members of his crew were killed near Block Island by tribesmen allied with the Narragansetts. Like Stone, Oldham had a bad reputation and had been expelled from Plymouth Colony. The fuss over Oldham’s killing might have subsided over time, except his killers had sought refuge with the Pequot. That made the English think they were involved.

Even though Oldham wasn’t liked in the colonies, Governor Henry Vane decided the colony needed to send a message to the Indians. So, he sent John Endecott to take revenge on the tribes around Block Island.

His orders were to kill the men of Block Island, spare the women and children, and take possession of the island. After that, Endecott was to visit the Pequots and demand they turn over the killers of Captain Stone. The Pequots were also expected to pay one thousand fathoms of wampum for damages.[2]

Endecott’s expedition landed at Block Island on August 24. The natives showered them with arrows as they landed, then fled inland. The soldiers chased after them for nearly two days, and then, when they reached the native village, it was empty. They burned the wigwams, corn, and canoes, then moved on.

Endecott took twenty men and sailed to Pequot Harbor. When the sachems refused to meet with them, the English burned their wigwams and destroyed their corn and canoes.

When he returned to Boston, Endecott reported they killed thirteen Pequots, wounded forty of them, and killed one Block Island native.[3]

Siege of Saybrook Fort

The colonists assumed Endecott’s expedition would discourage the Pequots from making any further attacks. But instead, it had just the opposite effect. The Pequots decided the time had come to rid themselves of the English once and for all.

The Pequots sent emissaries to the neighboring tribes, stressing the need to form a confederacy to exterminate this new race of people. They needed to make a decisive blow before the English multiplied and were too many for them.[4] Unfortunately, they had treated the other tribes so badly that most were reluctant to join them. The tribes took a certain pleasure in seeing their oppressors crushed. Or, as Thomas Prince said in his introduction to John Mason’s book, the Narragansett were more afraid of the Pequots than the English.[5] That was too bad because a decisive blow could