ABSTRACT
Native Americans, on the eve of the Revolution, were caught between two social forces: pan-Indianism and inter-tribal and intra-tribal division. Very little supra-authority affected the daily lives of the Indians, whose primary attachments were to kin, clan, and village. Bands found their turf and remained relatively isolated from other groups. From time to time a spiritual revitalization movement occurred, bringing Indians of a region together, as was evidenced, for example, among the Ohio country tribes in the Pontiac Uprising of 1763 and again during the War of 1812 period. The southern tribes, in their social organization, were much like their counterparts in the North. They, too, were beginning to experience the thrust westward of land-grabbing pioneers and speculators, despite living largely in the transmontane region. The Cherokees had fought a bloody war (1759–61) defending their eastern home territory.
