George Washington's War on Native America

by Barbara Alice Mann

Overview

The Revolutionary War is ordinarily presented as a conflict exclusively between colonists and the British, fought along the northern Atlantic seacoast. This important work recounts the tragic events on the forgotten Western front of the American Revolution—a war fought against and ultimately won by Native America. The Natives, primarily the Iroquois League and the Ohio Union, are erroneously presented in history texts as allies (or lackeys) of the British, but Native America was working from its own internally generated agenda: to prevent settlers from invading the Old Northwest. Native America won the war in the West, holding the land west and north of the Allegheny-Ohio River systems. While the British may have awarded these lands to the colonists in the Treaty of Paris, the Native Americans did not concur.

Throughout the war, the unwavering goal of the Revolutionary Army, under George Washington, and their associated settler militias was to break the power of the Iroquois League, which had successfully held off invasion for the preceding two centuries, and the newly formed Ohio Union. To destroy the Natives in the way of land seizure, Washington authorized a series of rampages intended to destroy the League and the Union by starvation. Food, livestock, homes, and trees were destroyed, first in the New York breadbaskets, then in the Ohio granaries—spreading famine across Native lands. Uncounted thousands of Natives perished from New York to Pennsylvania to Ohio. This book tells how, in the wake of the massive assaults, the Natives held back the American onslaught.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275981778
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/30/2005
Series:	Native America: Yesterday and Today
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	316
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Barbara Alice Mann is a Lecturer in the English Department of the University of Toledo. She is the author of Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas (2000) and Native Americans, Archeologists, and the Mounds (2003), editor and author of Native American Speakers of the Eastern Woodlands (Greenwood, 2001), and co-editor and main contributor of Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) (Greenwood, 2000).

Table of Contents

Series Foreword Bruce E. Johansen
Acknowledgments
Introduction "Niggur-in-Law to Old Sattan": How the West Was Really Won
1 "The Vile Hands of the Savages": Countdown to Total War, 1775–1778
2 "Shooting Pigeons": The Goose Van Schaick Sweep through Onondaga, April 1779
3 "The Wolves of the Forest": The Brodhead March up the Allegheny, August-September 1779
4 "Extirpate Those Hell-Hounds from off the Face of the Earth": The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign, 9 August-30 September 1779
5 "Keep That Nest of Hornets Quiet": The Ohio Campaigns of 1779–1781
6 "Two Mighty Gods with Their Mouth Wide Open": Settler Assaults on Ohio, 1782
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Ward Churchill

"Barbara Mann has done it again. Abundantly documented, lucidly written and, best of all, utterly unequivocal in its conclusions, this is quite simply the best book ever written on the topic"

Editorial Reviews

After reading this book, older high school and college students will have a different perspective about the Revolutionary War….This scholarly yet readable volume also includes a series foreword, a table of contents, an introduction, extensive notes, a bibliography, and an index.” —Multicultural Review

“To balance long-held beliefs about the Revolutionary War as a conflict between colonists and the British fought on the northern Atlantic seacoast, Mann (English, U. of Toledo) recounts the events on the western front, focusing primarily on the experiences of the Iroquois League and the Ohio Union. She uses American, British and Native documents and oral histories to argue that George Washington was fighting Native Americans, not the British, in the west and that he used the Revolutionary War to seize Native land after the Treaty of Paris in 1783.” —Reference & Research Book News

From the Publisher

“[Mann’s book] serves as a powerful statement of the native side of a conflict which has been sugar coated for two centuries. . . . The book should be required reading for all students seeking to understand the conflict on the frontier that lasted until the late nineteenth century. Given the extensive documentation provided, it will serve as an extremely valuable reference for college students and authors.”—Walter Dunn, Journal of Military History

Journal of Military History - Walter Dunn

“Mann’s grasp of primary sources makes her narrative one of the most detailed recent studies of the military campaigns in western Pennsylvania and New York during the American War of Independence.”—Patrick Spero, History

History - Patrick Spero

“Mann’s grasp of primary sources makes her narrative one of the most detailed recent studies of the military campaigns in western Pennsylvania and New York during the American War of Independence.”

—Patrick Spero, History

History

“[Mann’s book] serves as a powerful statement of the native side of a conflict which has been sugar coated for two centuries. . . . The book should be required reading for all students seeking to understand the conflict on the frontier that lasted until the late nineteenth century. Given the extensive documentation provided, it will serve as an extremely valuable reference for college students and authors.”

—Walter Dunn, Journal of Military History

Journal of Military History