Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

Racial animus between Euro-Americans and Native Americans began to grow around 1763. It was in that year that the French were driven from control in North America following the Seven Years’ War, which led to a “decade-long period of vengeance killings” (203).

Meanwhile, the religious doctrine of Separate Creation gained acceptance among many Native Americans in the 18th through the 19th centuries. It held that God had created Indians, Blacks, and Whites “distinct from one another and purposely placed them on distinct continents” (181). As a result of this doctrine, nativist sentiment grew: racial categories hardened, and hatred of the “other” increased. Among both Indians and Whites, there arose ethnic cleansing movements to purge the “other” from the continent.

On the Indian side, the Ottawa leader Pontiac preached racial separatism and led a coalition of several hundred Natives to lay siege to Detroit in the hopes of routing the British and returning the French to power—perhaps the first step in their gaining full independence. Similar Indian campaigns of racial cleansing in which white settlers were brutally slaughtered took place in Indiana and the Ohio Country. With the Treaty of Paris ending any hopes the French returning, Pontiac and his troops withdrew, and his war reached a stalemate.