American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State

3. Newcomers

3.  Newcomers The American Revolution resulted in another remapping of the confluence region. For the most part, however, the intercultural accommodations that had developed in previous decades persisted through the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Taking over the eastern side of the confluence region, Americans initially repeated the mistakes of British officials after the Seven Years’ War. But the strength displayed by a confederation of Indians in the Great Lakes and Ohio valley—and the support the confederation received from the British—forced American leaders to temper their arrogance, at least temporarily. More remarkable than any shifts in official stance were the reconciliations that occurred on the ground. On the western side of the confluence region during the 1780s and 1790s, the Spanish wrestled with how to secure their rule in the face of imperial rivals and unsettled relations with Indians and colonists. Concluding that a significant increase in population was essential, Spanish authorities lured a few thousand migrants from the Ohio valley into Upper Louisiana. The newcomers included both Indians, primarily Shawnees and Delawares, and Americans. For decades, these peoples had battled one another for control of the Ohio valley. But in the confluence region, at least initially, they resided to- AMERICAN CONFLUENCE  70 Map 4. Colonial Settlements in the Confluence Region, c. 1770s. gether on unexpectedly friendly terms. Their presence exacerbated tensions with previously established colonists and Indians, however. In addition, the newcomers did not eliminate the threat to Spanish rule posed by imperial rivals and by the Osages, who remained the most powerful nation in the confluence region to century’s end. Revolution and Repetition Unlike the Seven Years’ War, the American Revolution brought combat directly into the confluence region. These local  71 Newcomers battles were admittedly minor engagements in a much broader war that was both an unprecedented struggle for independence and one more chapter in the long competition between European empires for control of North America. As a result of the Revolution, a new contender emerged in the confluence region; the eastern side of the Mississippi valley became the western border of the United States. Still, even as the ambitions of American pioneers and the expansionism of the American republic forced Indians, established colonists, and imperial rivals to rethink their strategies, much about intercultural and interimperial relations continued to follow familiar scripts. Before the Treaty of Paris (1783) formalized the independence of the United States and the redrawing of regional maps, Americans staked claims to a vast “western country.” In the 1760s in defiance of British imperial dictates, a few thousand settlers moved across the Appalachians to take up residence in the upper Ohio valley. The number of colonists in the Ohio valley surged ahead in the mid-1770s. Nearly coincident with the outbreak of fighting between British soldiers and Massachusetts minutemen, Daniel Boone led a party of thirty men to the Kentucky River, where they established Boonesborough as an outpost of a new colony. By July 1776, when the Continental Congress issued a Declaration of Independence, several other settlements had also been founded in what is now central Kentucky . True, the cause of American nationhood was not a major concern for those who moved into Kentucky or Tennessee. The independence that mattered most to them came to men who owned real estate. It was for individual land claims that they risked their lives and the lives of their dependents.1 And quite a risk it was, for the lands to which newcomers sought exclusive rights were claimed as well by a variety of Indian nations, especially Cherokees, Delawares, and Shawnees. Not all chose to fight for possession. Some preferred to reach a peaceful understanding with the newcomers. The Shawnees and Delawares were themselves relatively new to the Ohio valley, having migrated west from Pennsylvania earlier in the eighteenth century. But within Shawnee, Delaware, and Cherokee villages were many, especially younger men, who rejected further attempts at conciliation with land-mad pioneers. In the AMERICAN CONFLUENCE  72 British, these advocates of war found a source of support, for the ministers of George III were now more determined to roll back the illegal settlements that had been made beyond the Appalachians . With British supplies, Indian warriors launched attacks against pioneer enclaves south of the Ohio River. In turn, pioneers in Kentucky and Tennessee struck back, though in seeking vengeance, they often failed to...