"Red Gentlemen and White Savages argues that after the devastation of the American Revolutionary War, the main concern of Federalist and Indian leaders was not the transfer of land, but the restoration of social order on the frontier. Nichols focuses on the "middle ground" of Indian treaty conferences, where, in a series of encounters framed by the rituals of Native American diplomacy and the rules of Anglo-American gentility, U.S. officials and Woodland Indian civil chiefs built an uneasy alliance. The two groups of leaders learned that they shared common goals: both sought to control their "unruly young men"-disaffected white frontiersmen and Native American warriors-and both favored diplomacy, commerce, and established boundaries over military confrontation. Their alliance proved unstable. In their pursuit of peace and order along the frontier, both sets of leaders irreparably alienated their own followers. The Federalists lost power in 1800 to the agrarian expansionists of the Democratic-Republican Party, while the civil chiefs lost influence to the leaders of new, pan-Indian resistance movements. This shift in political power contributed to the outbreak of war between the United States, Britain, and Britain's Indian allies in 1812, and prepared the way for Indian Removal."--BOOK JACKET.

From the end of Pontiac’s War in 1763 through the War of 1812, fear—even paranoia—drove Anglo-American Indian policies. In Red Dreams, White Nightmares, Robert M. Owens views conflicts between whites and Natives in this era—invariably treated as discrete, regional affairs—as the inextricably related struggles they were. As this book makes clear, the Indian wars north of the Ohio River make sense only within the context of Indians’ efforts to recruit their southern cousins to their cause. The massive threat such alliances posed, recognized by contemporary whites from all walks of life, prompted a terror that proved a major factor in the formulation of Indian and military policy in North America. Indian unity, especially in the form of military alliance, was the most consistent, universal fear of Anglo-Americans in the late colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods. This fear was so pervasive—and so useful for unifying whites—that Americans exploited it long after the threat of a general Indian alliance had passed. As the nineteenth century wore on, and as slavery became more widespread and crucial to the American South, fears shifted to Indian alliances with former slaves, and eventually to slave rebellion in general. The growing American nation needed and utilized a rhetorical threat from the other to justify the uglier aspects of empire building—a phenomenon that Owens tracks through a vast array of primary sources. Drawing on eighteen different archives, covering four nations and eleven states, and on more than six-dozen period newspapers—and incorporating the views of British and Spanish authorities as well as their American rivals—Red Dreams, White Nightmares is the most comprehensive account ever written of how fear, oftentimes resulting in “Indian-hating,” directly influenced national policy in early America.

The Federalist Frontier traces the development of Federalist policies and the Federalist Party in the first three states of the Northwest Territory—Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—from the nation’s first years until the rise of the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s. Relying on government records, private correspondence, and newspapers, Kristopher Maulden argues that Federalists originated many of the policies and institutions that helped the young United States government take a leading role in the American people’s expansion and settlement westward across the Appalachians. It was primarily they who placed the U.S. Army at the fore of the white westward movement, created and executed the institutions to survey and sell public lands, and advocated for transportation projects to aid commerce and further migration into the region. Ultimately, the relationship between government and settlers evolved as citizens raised their expectations of what the federal government should provide, and the region embraced transportation infrastructure and innovation in public education. Historians of early American politics will have a chance to read about Federalists in the Northwest, and they will see the early American state in action in fighting Indians, shaping settler understandings of space and social advancement, and influencing political ideals among the citizens. For historians of the early American West, Maulden’s work demonstrates that the origins of state-led expansion reach much further back in time than generally understood.

George Washington's place in the foundations of the Republic remains unrivalled. His life story--from his beginnings as a surveyor and farmer, to colonial soldier in the Virginia Regiment, leader of the Patriot cause, commander of the Continental Army, and finally first president of the United States--reflects the narrative of the nation he guided into existence. There is, rightfully, no more chronicled figure. Yet American history has largely forgotten what Washington himself knew clearly: that the new Republic's fate depended less on grand rhetoric of independence and self-governance and more on land--Indian land. Colin G. Calloway's biography of the greatest founding father reveals in full the relationship between Washington and the Native leaders he dealt with intimately across the decades: Shingas, Tanaghrisson, Guyasuta, Attakullakulla, Bloody Fellow, Joseph Brant, Cornplanter, Red Jacket, and Little Turtle, among many others. Using the prism of Washington's life to bring focus to these figures and the tribes they represented--the Iroquois Confederacy, Lenape, Miami, Creek, Delaware--Calloway reveals how central their role truly was in Washington's, and therefore the nation's, foundational narrative. Calloway gives the First Americans their due, revealing the full extent and complexity of the relationships between the man who rose to become the nation's most powerful figure and those whose power and dominion declined in almost equal degree during his lifetime. His book invites us to look at America's origins in a new light. The Indian World of George Washington is a brilliant portrait of both the most revered man in American history and those whose story during the tumultuous century in which the country was formed has, until now, been only partially told.