ABSTRACT
The newly independent United States Republic expanded rapidly from its original 13 British colonies with intrusions into both British and Spanish (later Mexican) territories while, at the same time, exterminating and/or consolidating the indigenous tribes onto squalid reservations. Clearly, the longest conflict in the United States was its Indian Wars. The Puritan Yankees’ experimentation with Indian removal and extermination in New Hampshire and other parts of the northeast coupled with the successful expulsion of the Acadian French from most of the Maritime provinces only embolden their resolve to continue on with these policies once the New Republic was established following the Revolutionary War. Colin Calloway, in his book The American Revolution in Indian Country, posited that the real war for independence from an oppressive intruder was that waged by American Indians in an effort to save their traditional homelands. He stated that the Indians’ “War of Independence” was well under way before 1775 and was waged on many fronts-economic, cultural, political, and military-and continued long after 1783.1
All of Indian Country east of the Mississippi River was engulfed in the ravages of the Revolutionary War, forcing Indian refugees into western French-held territory and south into Spanish-held territory. No one treated American Indians as badly as did the Americans. In the end, American Indians were excluded from the republic. It soon became clear that the American revolutionaries wanted to replace the British, French, and Spanish as colonial powers so that they alone could dominate the continent. The emerging New Republic was committed to expansionism from the start with a vision of a new society-one based on white supremacy and free from interference from Native Americans or those who supported them, such as the French Canadians.
