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To better understand American Indian participation in the War of 1812 it is necessary to step away from the narrative constructed by men like President James Madison and General William Henry Harrison, who saw a dangerous British-Indian alliance wherever they turned. Similarly, it is helpful to avoid using the Treaty of Ghent as a narrative endpoint. Therefore, instead of seeing the War of 1812 as a singular event and its conclusion as an end point, this article places the conflict and its Indian participants within a broad chronological context. Such an extended framework helps to explain why Indians were divided in response to the war and to illustrate how it connected developments that came before and after. Rather than addressing some type of composite Indian story, the article focuses on the Wyandot communities in the Old Northwest, whose lives were intertwined with those of their native neighbors and whose histories reveal that while the War of 1812 was undoubtedly transformative, it is best viewed as a transition rather than as a conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that recognizing the continued importance of Mississippian societies to Native American peoples in the colonial period offers a more accurate portrait of encounter and exchange than previous interpretive models that overemphasize and misuse the "middle ground" concept put forward by Richard White in the 1980s. By ridding the Mississippian past of its outdated categorization as "prehistory," early American studies may engage in an interdisciplinary, media-based, and intersubjective methodology that will aid in reimagining the traditions of Indigenous peoples in the Americas as a set of ongoing procedures for reconstructing their ever-changing identities as nations within a nation by persistently reassembling the storied practices that have served their communities since long before the first Europeans reached their shores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the U.S. federal government's state power and authority in the West during the antebellum period, including the federal government's relations with local authorities. An overview of the U.S. government's relationship with Native Americans in the West, including the development of Indian reservations and agencies, is provided.

In summer 1835, U.S. officials planned a treaty council designed to assert control over the Old Southwest and its Native inhabitants. The council instead furthered the diplomatic and economic goals of the Plains and removed Indians who were adjusting to new western contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the history of government policy for Native Americans under the administration of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. Emphasis is given to topics such as policies of allotment of land and cultural assimilation, the termination by the U.S. government of treaties with Native American tribes, and the removal and forced relocations of Native Americans onto reservations.

This article focuses on the United States Northwest Ordinance of 1787's profession of ‘utmost good faith’ towards Indians and its provision for ‘just and lawful wars’ against them. As interpreted by US officials as they authorized and practised war against native communities in the Northwest Territory from 1787 to 1832, the ‘just and lawful wars’ clause legalized wars of ‘extirpation’ or ‘extermination’, terms synonymous with genocide by most definitions, against native people who resisted US demands that they cede their lands. Although US military operations seldom achieved extirpation, this was due to their ineptness and the success of indigenous strategies rather than an absence of intention. When US military forces did succeed in achieving their objective, the result was massacre, as revealed in the Black Hawk War of 1832. US policy did not call for genocide in the first instance, preferring that Indians embrace the gift of civilization in exchange for their lands. Should Indians reject this display of ‘utmost good faith’, however, US policy legalized genocidal war against them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the roles of the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, in which the Colorado Territory Militia attacked a Cheyenne and Arapaho village in Southeastern Colorado. Details on tribal government structures and on an 1851 peace treaty between the Arapahos, Cheyennes, and Americans are presented. Other topics include the economic conditions of the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples, the Colorado gold rush, and the tribes' relations with American troops.

An essay is presented that examines borders drawn by the Shawnee Indians in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. between the 1795 agreement the Treaty of Greenville and the removal of the Shawnees in 1832. It also discusses disputes concerning the boundaries with the U.S. government in efforts to control the region. It examines the establishment of the Shawnee town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, Shawnee leaders Catahecassa, Tecumseh, and Tenskwatawa, and Shawnee and Delaware tribe land rights in the Great Lakes region and their negotiations with the administration of U.S. president Thomas Jefferson.

An essay is presented concerning former U.S. president John Adams and his thoughts and actions regarding U.S. relations with Native Americans. It examines Adams's attitudes toward Native Americans, the impact of his administration's policies upon Native Americans, and what the author identifies as Adams's paradoxical stances toward Native Americans. The article also compares Adams's interest in Native Americans with that of former U.S. president Thomas Jefferson.

Between 1863 and 1868, over 9000 Native Americans were interned under US military guard at the Bosque Redondo reservation in New Mexico. The objectives for internment were to end Indian raids of military forts and to assimilate native people. The prisoners' survival despite inhumane conditions is now commemorated at the Bosque Redondo Memorial, which opened to the public in 2004. This paper recounts the history of the site before it was a memorial, exploring why such designation was not established sooner, and it addresses the aspiration for the Memorial to become an accredited member of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A biography of fur trader and Indian subagent Reuben Lewis, brother of explorer Meriwether Lewis, is presented. It examines his involvement in the Missouri Fur Company and reflects on the Pacific Fur Company. The author also considers Reuben Lewis' role in the Indian Factory system and his relations with the Osage and the Cherokee Indians on the Arkansas River.

The article discusses the historiography of the Detroit River region during the colonial period through the early American Republic, noting that while historians have studied the fur trade by French-Canadians and French-Americans, the history of the area's French agricultural settlement has been overlooked. Some of the topics considered include the area's French architecture, French agricultural methods, and French-speaking culture during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. French and Indian relations, including intermarriage, during the colonial period are considered.

The article presents a deposition of an expert witness from the Canadian land claims case "Tk'kemlups Indian Band v. Canada and BC," examining the native land policies of British Columbia Governor James Douglas in the early 1860s. It focuses on the British Columbia's Kamloops Reserve, which was arranged by William G. Cox, a gold commissioner and magistrate, under Douglas' supervision. Reserves planned by surveyor William McColl in the same period are also discussed. Other topics include Native title and policies concerning Vancouver Island.

The article discusses the discontinuity in rhetoric and outcomes in U.S. Indian affairs and administration, critiquing a type of utopianism the author refers to as intentional fallacy. It focuses on the historical examples of the judgments of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall in the 1820s and 1830s, exploring court cases including Johnson v. McIntosh, Cherokee v. Georgia, and Worcester v. Georgia. Legal issues explored include Indian wardship and dependency, and ideas concerning Indian dispossession and the deconstructionist theory of legocentrism are also analyzed.

The article discusses the Arikara Indians as an obstacle to American fur trade in the U.S.'s northern Great Plains in the early 19th century. The Arikara Indians' role as middlemen in the upper Missouri River trade system is presented. An overview of the Lewis and Clark Expedition's contact with the Arikara Indians is presented. The hostility that the Arikara Indians had towards the U.S. after the death of their chief Eagle Feather (Piahito) and the resultant Arikara War of 1823 is also presented.

The article discusses internal disagreements and factionalism in Vincennes, Indiana at the beginning of the nineteenth century, examining how conflicts fueled the city's rivalry with the Native American settlement of Prophetstown, Indiana. It particularly explores divisions among European-American concerning slavery, which was banned by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and Indian policy leading up to the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. Several individuals are discussed including Indiana governor and later U.S. President William Henry Harrison, Swiss immigrant John Badollet, and politician Albert Gallatin. Indian leaders Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh are also considered.

As part of the continuous dialogue surrounding Native and American history in the nineteenth century, we should read Cooper's Leather-stocking Tales not as a simple assertion of a progressive history, nor as a mythical retreat from the concerns and responsibilities of history, but rather as a searching after a literary form, in this case romance, that might be able to encompass a trauma that places all narratives of American progress in doubt. Ultimately, it is in the failure of the Leather-stocking series, its inability to explain this national trauma and its inability to simply consign it to a place of national forgetting, that we can locate its greatest success. The five books that make up the Leather-stocking Tales represent a repeated invoking of a traumatic past, a continuous attempt to mitigate this trauma, and Cooper's awareness that such attempts must always fail because no explanation or justification can ever be fully adequate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses anti-Native American sentiments in essays by Michigan territorial governor Lewis Cass published in the periodical the "North American Review" from 1826 to 1830. It comments on ideas about Native Americans' trust for Cass and considers his support for Native American removal and the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The author explores Cass' writings as a vindication of the U.S. government's Indian policy and explores Cass' experiences in the War of 1812. Cass' criticism of the book "Memoirs of a Captivity Among the Indians of North America," by John Dunn Hunter is also noted.

The article focuses on 19 letters about Indians written by founding father Thomas Jefferson while he served as U.S. Ambassador to France from 1785-1789 to men including the Marquis de Chastellux, William Carmichael, Benjamin Hawkins, Edward Carrington and Edward Rutledge. Jefferson's philosophical beliefs depicted in the letters are compared to his federal Indian policies enacted while he was U.S. President from 1801-1809. Some of the subjects considered include Indian languages; the relationship between Indians, Asians, and Europeans; and Jefferson's application of economic and political philosophies to Indian life and culture.

The article discusses relations between Blackfeet Indians and American fur traders in the area of St. Louis, Missouri and the Upper Missouri River in the early 19th century. Contemporary accounts blaming Indian attacks on a combination of rival British commercial interests and Blackfeet treachery are called into question, and American provocations are discussed, especially efforts to obtain United States military intervention on behalf of trappers and traders. American-Blackfeet relations from the Lewis and Clark expedition through the start of peaceful economic relations in 1831 are discussed.

In 1849, a young, tough-minded mathematician named Alexander Vidal devised a provision to be included in any treaty terms undertaken with the Lakes Superior and Huron Anishinabe, then termed the "Ojibwa." Lake Superior chiefs had joined with Chief Shingwaukonse of Lake Huron in pressing for royalties from natural resources. Vidal sought to stop this movement through implementation of an escalation clause that promised a minor rise in treaty annuity payments should provincial resource revenues warrant such an increase. Though this contradicted the original Anishinabe campaign, the government negotiator, William B. Robinson, pushed through Vidal's suggestions. The Anishinabe retained their original goals and called for revision of the treaties' terms, which gained the attention of federal politicians such as Simon J. Dawson. This article examines events leading to the implementation of the escalation clause, as well as responses to the provision from the Anishinabe and politicians like Dawson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political activism of Cherokee women in opposition to Indian removal policies in the United States in the early 19th century, arguing that their campaigns predated and influenced the better-known activities of white women led by Catharine Beecher and Lydia Sigourney. Topics discussed include the mobilization of the Beloved Women of the Cherokee Nation in 1817 in response to the removal crisis of 1817-1819, the role of women and mothers in Cherokee society, the actions of Cherokee activist Margaret Ann Scott (Vann Crutchfield), and the role of Christian missionaries.

The article presents an historical examination into the 1826 planning and construction of the Michigan Road and its impact on the Potawatomi Indian population of the area. Details are given citing two different responses by the native groups, one side choosing to maintain older traditional ideology and eventually migrate away from the land and the other seeking to resist the U.S. expansion efforts through contemporary social and political pressures. The negotiations and debates between the U.S. and the Potawatomi are analyzed as a typical case example of the divergent mentalities of both parties during the period.

The article reports on the Makah whaling saga. It states that whaling serves as a major source of living of the Makah Native Americans. It mentions that whaling rights are given to the tribe by the U.S. government in 1855. In the 1920s, the commercial whaling of the North Pacific gray whale population effectuated the extinction of the specie. Consequently, the Makah people ceased whaling. Moreover, the U.S. Endangered Species Conservation Act listed the gray whales as among the endangered species in 1969.

The article discusses meetings between U.S. President Thomas Jefferson and various Native American tribal delegations brought about by the Lewis and Clark expedition's contact with western Native Americans. Tribes who met with the president include the Osage, Arikara, and Ponca. The author discusses silhouettes of Pawnee and Osage delegates made by a physiognotrace (invented by U.S. portraitist Charles Wilson Peale) during their visit to Washington, D.C.