Sixty Years' War

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Sixty Years' War
Part of the
Second Hundred Years War

A 1755 map of the Great Lakes region
Date1754–1815
Location
Great Lakes region
Result Forced displacement and assimilation of Native nations
Belligerents
1754–1763
 Great Britain
British America		 1754–1763
 Kingdom of France
 New France
1763–1766
Warriors from numerous American Indian tribes		 Various Native tribes
1775–1782
 Great Britain
Kingdom of Great Britain Loyalists		 1775–1782
 United States
 Spain
1785–1795
Northwestern Confederacy
Kingdom of Great Britain Province of Quebec (until 1791)
Kingdom of Great Britain Lower Canada (1791–1795)		 1785–1795
 United States
Chickasaw
Choctaw
Tecumseh's Confederacy
Six Nations
 Spain
(1814)		 1812–1815
 United States
Choctaw
Cherokee
Chickasaw
Seneca

The Sixty Years' War (

Great Lakes region, including Lake Champlain and Lake George,[1] encompassing a number of wars over multiple generations. The conflicts involved the British Empire, the French colonial empire, the United States, the Spanish Empire, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The term Sixty Years' War is used by academic historians to provide a framework for viewing this era as a whole, rather than as isolated events.[2][3]

French and Indian War (1754–1763)

Main article: French and Indian War

Canadians view this war as the American theater of the

Mohawks
who fought as British allies. British conquest of New France marked the end of French colonial power in the region and the establishment of British rule in Canada.

Pontiac's War (1763–1765)

Main article: Pontiac's War

Indian allies of the defeated French launched a war against the British due to dissatisfaction with their handling of tribal diplomacy. Pontiac found allies willing to attack British forts from Detroit in modern day Michigan, to Pennsylvania and New York, and even down the Mississippi.[4] Hostilities came to an end after British expeditions in 1764 led to peace negotiations over the next two years. The Indian were unable to drive away the British, but the uprising prompted the British government to modify the policies that had provoked the conflict. The murder of Pontiac in 1769 led to war between rival Indian nations.[4]

Lord Dunmore's War (1774)

Main article: Lord Dunmore's War

The expansion of colonial Virginia into the Ohio Country sparked a war with Ohio Indians, primarily Shawnees and Mingos, forcing them to cede their hunting ground south of the Ohio River (Kentucky) to Virginia. This also began a period sometimes referred to as the Twenty Years War, in which the Shawnee struggled against incursions into their territory.[5]

Western theater of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)

Main article: Western theater of the American Revolutionary War

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 prohibited American colonists from settling the lands acquired from France at the conclusion of the French and Indian War, but this caused resentment among the colonists and is often cited as one of the causes of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). The war spilled onto the frontier, with British military commanders in Canada working with North American Indian allies to provide a strategic diversion from the primary battles in the east coastal colonies. Many conflicts in this western theater would harden the animosity between the native tribal nations and the new United States.

At the conclusion of the war, Great Britain ceded to the new United States the

Old Northwest, home of many of Britain's Indian allies, and all of the lands south to the Gulf of Mexico. The Treaty of Paris (1783) granted the United States jurisdiction to the Mississippi River
without consulting the Native nations who lived there.

Northwest Indian War (1785–1795)

Main article: Northwest Indian War

Following the 1783 peace treaty with Great Britain, a nascent United States sought expansion into the

1791, and gained support from Great Britain. The United States was forced to rebuild the Army and finally defeated the confederate forces at the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers. The confederation fractured, and the war officially ended with the Treaty of Greenville, which granted to the United States control over most of the modern state of contested Ohio
.

During this time period, U.S. Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, which stated "Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress."[6] Seeking to avoid another costly war, President Thomas Jefferson promoted a policy of assimilation and removal. This continued to foster resentment among the native nations.

War of 1812 (1812–1815)

Main article: War of 1812

A number of North American Indians under the leadership of famous Shawnee war chief

frontier war effort. Native American fighters were successful in multiple battles against the United States, including the Battle of Fort Dearborn (near the site of present-day Chicago) and the sieges of Detroit and Prairie du Chien. The war between the United States and British Canada eventually ended after numerous bloody border engagements as a stalemate, after resisting a set of American invasions seeking to assimilate the northern Canadian British and French colonials into the independent American union of states, a prime goal of the original western "War Hawks
" agitators, south of the border.

After the peace treaty signed in Ghent reached North America in 1815, joint efforts began establishing the Great Lakes as a permanent boundary between the two nations. The United Kingdom returned outposts and territories captured from the United States, leaving their Native allies without the advantages they had earned.

Following this long struggle, the increasing numbers of Canadian immigrants from Europe were, like their more independent neighbors to the south, free to gradually develop the several northern British colonies of Upper and Lower Canada into semi-independent provinces, and eventual confederation in 1867 as an autonomous Dominion under the Crown in the British Empire. American Indians in the region no longer had European allies in the struggle against American and Canadian westward expansion.

Legacy

South.[8] The United States and the Sauk later signed a treaty in 1816, but the United States used that treaty to claim Sauk lands east of the Mississippi River, leading to the Black Hawk War in 1832. The Ohio River continued to act as a border between southern states and the Northwest Territory, where slavery had been outlawed, setting regional differences that would help shape the American Civil War.[9]

See also

Citations

  1. ^ Skaggs 2001, p. 4.
  2. ^ Skaggs 2001, p. 1.
  3. ^ Skaggs 2001, pp. XVIII–XIX.
  4. ^ a b "Ottawa Chief Pontiac's Rebellion against the British begins". History.com. May 4, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2023.
  5. ^ Sobol, Thomas Thorleifur (February 17, 2016). "Virginia Looking Westward: From Lord Dunmore's War Through the Revolution". Journal of the American Revolution. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  6. ^ Hill, Roscoe R., ed. (1936). "A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 - 1875". Journals of the Continental Congress. 32. Washington: Government Printing Office: 340. Retrieved February 17, 2021.
  7. ^ Skaggs 2001, pp. 274–275.
  8. ^ Skaggs 2001, p. 275.
  9. ^ Skaggs 2001, p. 376.

General and cited references

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