Ohio History Journal

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WAYNE'S PEACE WITH THE INDIANS OF THE OLD

WAYNE'S PEACE WITH THE INDIANS OF THE OLD

NORTHWEST, 1795*

 

by DWIGHT L. SMITH

Instructor in History, Ohio State University

Far from being the least of the many problems with which

the United States had to contend at its beginning was the settling

of difficulties between the Indians and whites on the frontier. If

the new nation were to grow in size, as apparently it was doing,

the native Indians would have to be removed, absorbed, or ex-

tirpated, either voluntarily or by force. The decade from 1783

to 1793 was one in which neither voluntary nor forcible means

brought a solution. Peace emissaries and military expeditions

alike suffered defeat, and the Indians became more and more rest-

less and unsettled. Only after a carefully planned and executed

campaign by General "Mad Anthony" Wayne were the Indians

faced with no other alternative but to make peace. This was ac-

complished by the Treaty of Greene Ville, August 3, 1795.

When the American Revolution was officially ended with the

exchange of treaty ratifications by the United States and Great

Britain on May 12, 1784, the Indians had neither been consulted

about the treaty nor mentioned in it.1 The war was only sus-

pended in the interior by the peace between the United States and

Great Britain. A supplementary peace was necessary, therefore,

to liquidate the war in the West. Congress attempted to effect a

general settlement, and referred the problem of conciliating the

 

* This is the text of a paper given at the forty-third annual meeting of the

Mississippi Valley Historical Association, Oklahoma City, April 20-22, 1950.

1 A British officer described the great disgust which prevailed among the In-

dians when they learned of the proposed treaty and its boundaries. Allen Maclean

to Frederick Haldimand (abstract), May 18, 1783, in "Calendar of Haldimand Col-

lection," Report on Canadian Archives (37 vols., Ottawa, 1882-1929), 1886, pp. 32-33.

The Calendar of the Haldimand Collection is in three volumes scattered through the

Reports for the years 1884 through 1889. The abstract of the letter referred to above

is in Volume II, which, with its own pagination, begins at the end of the Report for

1886.

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