Quilled cover of birchbark box, Ottawa (?), Cat. 258673 



neg 101964c 



12 



frontier. At an intertribal congress held at Fort Stan- 

 wix, New York in 1768 under auspices of the British 

 superintendent of Indian Affairs, 3,000 Indians 

 present believed they settled the vexing problem of 

 white encroachment. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix 

 stated that the permanent boundary between white 

 settlements and Indian country was the Ohio River 

 On the other hand, the British army could not control 

 the lawless inhabitants of the frontier. 



The intense struggle of Indian people to maintain 

 the Ohio River boundary line, protecting their vil- 

 lages, cornfields, and hunting grounds, began im- 

 mediately. The first military engagements occurred in 

 southeastern Ohio in 1774, and fighting continued in 

 Ohio and Indiana for twenty years as an extended ven- 

 detta between Kentuckians and Great Lakes Indians. 

 In 1 774, when the first Indian towns in Ohio were des- 

 troyed, only 400 Americans occupied fortified camps 

 in Kentucky. The numbers grew rapidly as ponies and 

 wagons crossed mountain trails and flatboats de- 

 scended the Ohio River — often braving Indian fire — 

 to increase Kentucky's population to 73,000 in 1790. 



The American Revolution complicated the Indi- 

 an strategy after 1 775. Delawares living closest to Pitts- 

 burgh, the most western military base of the Revolu- 

 tionary army, felt constrained to cooperate with the 

 Americans, who had never undertaken to march on 



British-held Detroit. In turn, American authorities 

 agreed to recognize the Ohio River boundary estab- 

 lished under the British regime, and in a later 1778 

 treaty held forth the promise of establishing a separate 

 Delaware state within the American confederation. 

 But that same year, members of the Indian staff at Pitts- 

 burgh fled to join the British Indian service in Detroit. 

 British relations with Indians improved markedly with 

 the addition of the new recruits, former Indian captives 

 with many contacts through trading enterprises and 

 knowledge of several Indian languages. 



After the American colonies gained their 

 independence in 1783, government officials first in- 

 sisted that Indian people had to surrender the long de- 

 sired land in southern Ohio because they were allies ot 

 the defeated British. Indian spokesmen asserted that 

 the British king had no right to give away Indian land 

 and George Washington had no right to accept it. The 

 secretary of war later modified his view, admitting that 

 the Indians had "rights to the soil," but asked that if 

 they sold any land they should deal with the American 

 government. Long before Americans actually secured 

 Indian land in the Great Lakes, the Northwest Ordi- 

 nance of 1787 outlined plans for future government, 

 including the unrealistic statement "The utmost good 

 faith shall always be observed toward the Indians, their 

 lands and property shall never be taken from them 



