Indians in the American Revolution
Calloway, Colin G. The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native
American Communities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Study of eight Indian communities during the Revolutionary War. Emphasizes Indian
agency in tracing their diplomacy, strategies, and conflicts.
_____, The Shawnees and the War for America. New York: Penguin Books, 2008.
“With the courage and resilience embodied by their legendary leader Tecumseh, the
Shawnees waged a war of territorial and cultural resistance for half a century. Noted
historian Colin G. Calloway details the political and legal battles and the bloody fighting
on both sides for possession of the Shawnees’ land, while imbuing historical figures such
as warrior chief Tecumseh, Daniel Boone, and Andrew Jackson with all their ambiguity
and complexity. More than defending their territory, the Shawnees went to war to
preserve a way of life and their own deeply held vision of what their nation should be.” –
From the press.
_____, ed. The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America. Boston: St.
Martin's Press, 1994.
“This collection presents Native American perspectives on the events of the colonial era,
from the first encounters between Indians and non-Indians in the early 17th century to the
American Revolution in the late 18th century. The documents are drawn from letters,
speeches and the records of treaty negotiations in which Indians were addressing nonIndians. Calloway's introduction discusses the nature of such sources and the problems of
dealing with them. He also analyzes the forces of change that were creating a "new
world" for Native Americans during the colonial period. The book's themes are arranged
chronologically and the editorial apparatus throughout the book helps to put primary
sources into context for the student. Each chapter contains an overview. Each document
is accompanied by a headnote with a brief discussion of its context and significance. An
introduction discusses the uses and problems of primary source material and provides an
overview of the Indian experience during the colonial period.” –From the Press.
Blacksnake, Governor. Chainbreaker: the Revolutionary War Memoirs of Governor Blacksnake
as told to Benjamin Williams. Edited by Thomas S. Abler. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1989.
Memoirs of war chief “Chainbreaker,” nephew of Handsome Lake, as recorded by fellow
Seneca Benjamin Williams in 1833-34. Chapters include “prelude to conflict,”
“Commitment to the King’s Cause,” “Blacksnake Takes the War Trail,” “Negotiating
Peace,” “Ambassadors to the Western Nations,” and “The Revelation of Handsome
Lake,” as well as several speeches recorded in the appendixes.
_____. Chainbreaker's War: a Seneca Chief Remembers the American Revolution. Edited by
Jeanne Winston Adler. Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press, 2002.
“This authentic narrative of a Seneca war chief recounting his experiences during the
American Revolution has been edited for readability, freeing at last the clear, strong
voice of the Seneca leader known to American colonists as Governor Blacksnake, who,
together with the Mohawk chieftain Joseph Brant and other leaders of the powerful
Iroquois Confederation scourged the New York and Pennsylvania frontiers from 1777 to
1783.” –from the press
Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity,
1745-1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Traces intertribal relations and religious revitalizations during the last half of the
eighteenth century. Dowd explores commonalities and pan-Indianism among the
Delawares, Shawnees, Cherokees, and Creeks.
Fitzpatrick, Alan. Wilderness War on the Ohio: the Untold Story of the Savage Battle for British
and Indian Control of the Ohio Country During the American Revolution. Benwood, WV: Fort
Henry Publications, 2003.
Glatthaar, Joseph T. and James Kirby Martin. Forgotten Allies: the Oneida Indians and the
American Revolution. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.
Covers the Revolution from the Oneida perspective and demonstrates both their support
and cultural changes caused by the conflict.
Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse
University Press, 1972.
“In tracing the Iroquois part in the Revolution Professor Graymont has dealt with a larger
theme—the irony of Indian history. In her words: ‘Wherever whites and Indians came
into contact, the latter both gained and suffered. In reaching out for the white man and his
civilization the Indian was, in large measure, bringing despair upon himself.’ (p. 295)
Iroquois involvement in the Revolution hastened this process.” –Alan S. Brown, The
History Teacher, vol.6, no. 2 (Feb.1973), p. 326.
Grenier, John. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
“This book explores the evolution of American war, showing how the first war waged
against Indian noncombatant populations and their agricultural resources became the
standard method of war employed by early Americans and which ultimately defined their
military heritage. The bloodthirsty American conquest of Indian communities east of the
Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by
extravagant violence and focused on conquest.” –from the press
Hagan, William T. Longhouse Diplomacy and Frontier Warfare: The Iroquois Confederacy in
the American Revolution. Albany: New York State American Revolution Bicentennial
Commission, 1975.
Jennings, Francis, ed. The American Indian and the American Revolution. Chicago: Newberry
Library, 1983.
_____. Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America.
New York: Norton, 1988.
“Empire of Fortune brings Jenning’s larger work to its conclusion by reexamining the
Seven Years’ War, which pitted natives and the rival empire of Great Britain and France
in a contest for hegemony over eastern North America. Yet, when set against its
predecessors, it offers readers much less that is new or especially challenging. Those
familiar with recent reevaluations.... will recognize Jenning’s theme that empires at war
are as much a threat to the political rights of their own subjects as to the security much a
threat to the political rights of their own subjects as to the security of their enemies.” –
Michael McConnell, Ethnohistory, vol. 37, no. 3 (Summer, 1990), 314.
Mann, Barbara Alice. George Washington's War on Native America. Westport, CT: Praeger,
2005.
“This book is about people. Brave and determined Americans motivated by a
commitment to individualism and love of liberty struggled for independence against
incompetent British bureaucrats and inept military leadership undercut by quarreling
generals and inflexible tactics. Less an account of “George Washington’s war,” this is a
history of the actions and motives of the British and American military leadership during
the American Revolution.” –Lawrence Delbert Cress, The American Historical Review,
vol. 98, no. 4 (Oct., 1993), 1318.
Merrell, James Hart. The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European
Contact Through the Era of Removal. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
“James H. Merrell paints a cultural landscape in which native peoples, Europeans, and
Africans blend together yet maintain their distinct hues and forms. The Catawabas, who
emerged as a nation in the eighteenth century, dominate the picture. Composed of Esaws
and remnants of once independent peoples of the Carolina piedmont, the Catawbas
gradually shifted from their central position to the margins of colonial society.” –Theda
Perdue, The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 47, no. 2 (Apr., 1990), 288.
Mintz, Max M. Seeds of Empire: The American Revolutionary Conquest of the Iroquois. New
York: New York University Press, 2002.
“Seeds of Empire recreates the events surrounding General John Sullivan's scorchedearth campaign against the Six Nations of the American Indians of New York and the
Eastern territories in 1779, following the surrender of General John Burgoyne's British
army at the Battle of Saratoga. Mintz's meticulous historical research and renowned
storytelling ability give life to this arresting narrative as it probes the mechanisms of the
American Revolution and the structure and function of the Iroquois Six Nations.” – From
the press
Mohr, Walter H. Federal Indian Relations, 1774-1788. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1933. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1971.
O'Donnell, James H., III. The Southern Indians in the American Revolution. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1973.
“His story depicts British interjurisdictional difficulties and the efforts of various
American states to achieve a just peace for the tribes despite the land lusts of suspicious
and vengeful frontiers man. The result is a sound, comprehensive study with many fresh
insights. It is the best current survey of the subject.” –David H. Corkran, The William
and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 31, no. 3 (July, 1974), 509.
Skaggs, David Curtis and Nelson, Larry L. eds. The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 17541814. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.
“The coeditors have assembled a showcase of individuals whose expertise in a multitude
of fields (Native-American history, naval and military history, diplomatic history,
political history, frontier history, religious history, cultural history, and biography) is
brought to bear on this subject.... One of the main purposes of The Sixty Years War is
that it brings a Great Lakes perspective to the French and Indian, American
Revolutionary, and 1812 Wars as well as to the ubiquitous European-Native American
conflicts.” –Michael D. Carter, Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 22 (Spring, 2002),
135-136.
Sosin, Jack M. The Revolutionary Frontier, 1763-1783. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1967.
“First, the author presents his work as a confrontation with Turner’s thesis of the
frontier’s influence upon American institutions. His argument that, in social life and
government, the frontier made new modifications in the forms brought from the seaboard
is somewhat halfhearted and not entirely new.... [H]is other subject: the role of land
speculation in western expansion. He emphasizes the importance of large-scale
speculators and developers in opening the West, and thereby modifies the romantic
picture of the lone hunter and humble yeoman on the frontier. He provides and excellent,
succinct summary of British and American land policies, the activities of land companies,
and some of the prominent efforts to found colonies beyond the mountains.” – John Cary,
The American Historical Review, vol. 73, no. 4 (Apr. 1968), 1236-1237.
Taylor, Alan. The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the
American Revolution. Vintage, 2007.
“The study of borderlands is hot; Pulitzer and Bancroft prize–winning historian Taylor
(William Cooper's Town) offers a rich, sprawling history focusing on the Iroquois Six
Nations of New York and Upper Canada during the era of the American Revolution.
Taylor examines Indians' wise but unsuccessful attempts to hold onto their land as
colonists encroached on it. One of Taylor's great insights is that historians have taken at
face value what European settlers said about the "preemption rights" by which colonists
and imperial governments claimed Indian territory. Taylor recovers Indians' reactions to
those "rights." Many Indian leaders, recognizing that they couldn't reverse European
settlement, tried to at least dictate how that settlement would unfold—they wished to
lease, rather than sell, their land, and they hoped to pick their neighbors. Giving narrative
shape to the depressing and potentially unwieldy saga is the tale of a 50-year relationship
between Joseph Brant, a Mohawk who exploited his ability to shift "between European
gentility and Indian culture" in an effort to preserve native land rights, and Samuel
Kirkland, a pious Calvinist who was both an evangelist and government agent among the
Indians. This complex history told by a master of the trade will repay close reading. 48
b&w illus., 4 maps.” – From Publishers Weekly
Waller, George Macgregor. American Revolution in the West. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1976.
Walling, Richard S. Patriots' Blood: the Indian Company of 1778 & its destruction in the Bronx.
East Brunswick, NJ: The Author, 2005.
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes
Region, 16501815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Traces the exchange between Great Lakes region Indians and the European cultures they
met. This geographic and cultural location, which White terms “the middle ground,”
illustrates the strategic interactions of European and Indian cultures and demonstrates
how the two interacted for their mutual benefit in some common forum.
Williams, Glenn F. Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois.
Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2005.
“The True Story of the Little-Known Campaign that Sealed the Fate of the Six Nations
and Changed the Course of the American Revolution” – From Westholme Publishing
Wright, J. Leitch Jr. The Only Land They Knew: The Tragic Story of the American Indians in the
Old South. New York: Free Press, 1981.
“Wright writes mostly about the 16th through 18th centuries and he is primarily
interested in the cultural interactions of Indians, Europeans and Blacks.... Wright opens
his book with an ethno graphic summary of the Southeast and he assumes a far broader
cultural homogeneity than actually existed.... The next several chapters deal with the
Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia frontiers from settlement to the end of the 18th century.
Unlike most scholars, Wright’s emphasis is less on trade than on slavery.... Wright’s final
chapters suggest how the cultural and genetic mixing shaped the early South.” – Michael
D. Green, Ethnohistory, vol. 31, no. 2 (Spring, 1984), 133-134.
“Wright has made a valiant but unsuccessful attempt to compress the complex stories of
the southeastern Indians into a coherent whole. The problem, in part, stems from the need
to cover so much material in so brief a compass.” –Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Journal
of American History, vol. 68, no. 3 (Dec., 1981), 636.
Theses and Dissertations:
Dennis, Jeffrey William. “American Revolutionaries and Native Americans the South Carolina
Experience.” Ph. D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2002.
Fisher, Doris B. “Mary Musgrove: Creek Englishwoman.” Ph. D. diss., Emory University, 1990.
Sheftall, John McKay. “George Galphin and Indian-White Relations in the Georgia Backcountry
During the American Revolution.” M. A. thesis, University of Virginia, 1983.
Stevens, Paul L. “His Majesty's ‘Savage’ Allies British Policy and the Northern Indians During
the Revolutionary War: the Carleton Years, 1774-1778.” Ph. D. diss., State University of New
York at Buffalo, 1984.