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

Racial animus between Euro-Americans and Indigenous people 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 Indigenous peoples in the 18th through the 19th centuries. It held that God had created Indigenous, Black, and white people as “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 Indigenous and white groups, there arose ethnic cleansing movements to purge the “other” from the continent.

On the Indigenous side, the Ottawa leader Pontiac preached racial separatism and led a coalition 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 Indigenous campaigns of racial cleansing in which white settlers were brutally slaughtered occurred in Indiana and the Ohio Country. With the Treaty of Paris ending any hopes of the French returning, Pontiac and his troops withdrew, and his war reached a stalemate.